Constellations
by kosmokomik
Summary: A researcher out of her element, finding herself caught up in a war: brief glimpses of life on and off the Normandy as seen through the eyes of Liara T'Soni. Liara/fem!Shepard. Story once again updated after a bit of a hiatus.
1. The Normandy Let's Silence Speak

**Author's note:** A journey through the eyes of Liara T'Soni. _Updated February 2011._

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**Chapter I: The Normandy Let's Silence Speak**

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Liara was reminded of her mother's home on Thessia when she found herself aboard the SSV Normandy.

Benezia had owned a large, sprawling mansion, situated just outside Serrice in a valley that was in constant bloom with the heady scent of blossoms filling the air. The sky had been lined with stretched-out wisps of dusty pink clouds, and the endless halls had led to a myriad of rooms, each with their own, unique designs and inhabitants. It had been a place teeming with life, a meeting point for the discussion and dissection of ideas meant to alter the course of history, and the centre of Benezia's teachings.

While it had been a beautiful place, Liara's memories of it were mainly ones of having to dodge Benezia's followers through the vast corridors, trying to search out some solitude in her so-called home. Yet, everywhere she went, there were the sparring commandos, the young maidens hungering for knowledge, and the two types that she avoided the most. The ones trying to get a foot in with her mother through Liara, and the ones who saw her as the spitting image of Benezia with a future to follow in her path. The Normandy was the same, in that aspect: she drew eyes. The crew had looked at her with much hesitance and doubt, even for the brief period of time she had been exposed to them.

When a sharp pain jolted through her, she was brought back to the present where she was sitting in the medical bay, Doctor Chakwas' examination of her currently involving a few electrodes placed across her skin to test her nervous system. The electric current triggered her to unconsciously throw up a biotic barrier, but with a bit of focus, she let it fall. Chakwas watched, clearly intrigued, before she removed the electrodes and made a note on her open computer console.

"So, doctor T'Soni?" Chakwas asked, motioning for Liara that she could get dressed again. "What are you a doctor of?"

"Prothean history," Liara replied, re-fastening the clasps at her neck with nimble fingers. "Mainly their extinction."

"You'll make for a welcomed addition to the crew, then. I don't think anyone aboard this ship knows much beyond the basics of them. Frankly, before all this began, I just thought it was a galaxy-wide myth."

"I assure you, the Prothean legacy is quite real," Liara said, trying to keep her voice steady. Chakwas raised an eyebrow at her nonetheless.

"I meant no offence, doctor," Chakwas said. "I may be a doctor of medicine, but that does not mean I can be any less ignorant than the regular human being."

"I was not offended. What you expressed is a common opinion that I am met with often. The Protheans are often questioned these days, but their legacy is undeniable. The majesty of their former empire, the advanced sophistication of their technology that still, after all these millenias, are used..." Liara stopped, biting her lip. "I did not mean to turn that into a lecture."

"Well, I wouldn't mind hearing it when you feel like giving it," Chakwas said, making some final notes on her computer." You're completely fine, doctor T'Soni. I would recommend you have something to eat and drink, though. The cantina is just outside. We don't have any asari-specific food, though, but I assume you have no problems eating human food?"

"N-no, not at all," Liara said. She did not want to tell the doctor that she had never had human cuisine before, and had no clue if she would even like it. Would it be offensive if she found it completely repulsive and spit it out, or what if she was unable to stomach it? What if there was some allergen common in human food that she would react to? She felt annoyed at herself for never having taken the time to actually take a closer look at the young species.

When she stepped out of the medbay, she looked the interior of the ship over more closely, standing still for a few minutes to take it all in. The walls gleamed in the dimmed light, the darkened colour palette making her feel cold – it was far removed from the light and airy interior standard of asari transportation design. She hadn't spent any time on military vessels, though some transports, particularly quarian, were often de-comissioned from one army or another, though had been stripped of all sensitive equipment and re-fitted for commercial use.

As she stood still, she could feel the vague, low hum from the machines on the lower deck, the very air vibrating slightly. Becoming self-conscious of how long she'd just been standing there, particularly with the glances the passing crew were giving her, she took a few nervous steps. The noise her feet made when she took a few steps across the floor echoed slightly. It was quite a quiet ship, despite the small size.

While Liara loved silence when she had steady ground beneath her feet, the overwhelming silence of space unnerved her. The vast, empty space of an entire galaxy, stretching out endlessly with just a hull between her and the vacuum... And the claustrophobic environments of starships always made her feel uncomfortable.

In the corner of her eye, she saw someone familiar. It took a brief moment for her to connect the dark-haired human male in the grey outfit with the ferocious biotic she had seen on Therum. He was standing by some brightly-glowing panels, their strong lights making the man prespire.

"Excuse me," she tried, approaching the man carefully. "Where is commander Shepard?"

"She's filing mission reports," the man replied, wiping sweat away from his brow. He seemed disinclined to continue, but Liara felt that she had to at least make an attempt at communicating with the crew aboard the ship.

"I do not think we were properly introduced at Therum," Liara said. "I wanted to thank you. For saving me. That was... Thank you, I mean."

"It's all in a day's work, doctor."

"I see." Liara was at a loss for words, and kept looking at the young man, waiting for him to continue. Her experience of dealing with military personnel was limited at best, humans even worse.

When he noticed her staring, he gave her a slight smile, then promptly returned to his monitors, brow furrowed. Liara felt exasperation crawling up on her.

"Please," she tried, horrified at the hint of desperation in her voice. "What is your name?"

"I'm Lieutenant Alenko," he said, glancing briefly at her. "Kaidan Alenko. Doctor, I wouldn't mind talking more, but now isn't really the time."

"Of course." She nodded, backing away from the warm consoles and the flickering lights that strained her eyes. How he kept working away so diligently in such a horrible work station, she could not understand.

She walked over to the cantina area, nodding to some seated crew members before she began rifling through the choice of vacuum-packed rations, reading the content descriptions as she tried to find something that sounded appetizing. While the chicken and rice option seemed to be a favoured one, judging from how relatively few there were left of them, she wondered what was so unappetizing about cabbage patch stew. She was about to turn and ask the people seated behind her, when one of them whispered something a bit too loud.

"Since when does the Alliance allow associates of the enemy to walk around freely on board?"

Liara froze for a split second, then bit the inside of her cheek as she quickly gathered a few ration packets into her arms and left. Only when she had gotten a few paces away from the whispering crew members did she realize she had nowhere she could go. She felt embarrassed at her own short-sightedness, but elbowed the panel next to the medbay door and slid inside.

"Doctor T'Soni? Back so soon?" Chakwas barely looked up from her computer, but Liara thought she could discern a slight smile on the human's lips.

"I found some food," Liara said meekly.

Chakwas looked up briefly. "So I see."

"I was... Is there some place where I could sit down and work? Somewhere quiet?"

"The medical storage should be of interest to you," Chakwas said, pointing to the door behind her. "Engineer Adams and Tali'Zorah found a couple of Prothean disks when we were searching the Artemis Tau systems for you. They are in the storage room, and there should also be a console and some other resources there for you."

Liara nodded, but felt no need to tell Chakwas that the disks were useless to her. No scientist had yet figured out how to transcribe the information on them, and they were usually too fragile for her to try and tamper with. Still, she could not help but marvel at the fact that Shepard's crew had managed to actually find intact ones – the only substantial collection of them were being kept at the Armali university, and it barely spanned fourteen disks that were considered good enough to keep for future technological advances to decipher.

"Thank you," Liara said, and she continued to express her gratitude to Chakwas until the storage door closed behind her. She sat down by the desk, letting out a heavy sigh. The small storage room at least hid her from the suspicious glances of the Normandy's crew, and offered her some solitude.

She tore up one of the packets and squeezed the thick, slow-moving substance slightly. The bland mass of food poked out of the foil packaging, and Liara nibbled at it a little before re-wrapping it and placing it on the desk. It didn't taste too bad, but she had no appetite at all. She was used to going without eating for longer periods of time – her research hadn't exactly made her rich, and once she got into a cycle of not eating for a few days, as had happened on Therum due to the circumstances of geth hunting her through the ruins, she had to wait for the hunger to return before she could eat.

Deciding to do something productive to distract herself from feeling useless and waiting for her body to return to its normal state of balance, Liara activated her omni-tool and linked it up with the computer. She began to transfer the notes she had taken from the dig site on Therum, watching the incomplete sentences and thought-processes appear on-screen.

Scrolling through the document quickly, she poised her fingers over the keyboard. A stray memory of Benezia's mansion rose to the surface of her mind. After her first excavation, she had returned to her mother's home, searching out her quiet place in the garden so she could focus on writing her report of the findings. She had hid herself away from the ever-growing number of followers that gathered at the estate, shying distractions and letting herself be absorbed by the mundane bits of Prothean history she had found.

It wasn't until well into the night, when the Matriarch had ventured out into the garden to find her daughter, that Liara had paused from her work. She had been unwilling to part with the reports, and Benezia had patiently pried her fingers away from the computer she had in her lap and shut it off. It was then that Liara had felt the utter exhaustion she had suppressed, and leaned her head against her mother's shoulder as they walked back to the house in silence. How they had eaten a simple dinner in the kitchen, talking about nothing – her mother's quiet acceptance of what her daughter dedicated herself to, and Liara's eager chatter about the theories shaping in her notes.

She shook her head, trying to clear her mind of her mother. Shutting her eyes tightly, she willed the image of the Matriarch away from her mind, and turned her attention to the Therum notes – she had to do something of them all, having left them in disorder since the few days spent in Nova Yekaterinburg where the oppressive heat kept her from forming coherent thoughts.


	2. To Stumble Through it All

**Chapter II: To Stumble Through it All**

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Liara, so deeply immersed in the Prothean texts she had recovered from Therum, jumped in her seat when she heard a knock on the door. She had lost track of time, she realized, and looking around the dimly lit room, it took a while for her to register where she was again. The exhaustion was playing some cruel tricks on her mind.

"Doctor T'Soni?" came Shepard's voice from the door.

Liara heard the door shut with a gentle hiss behind the human female, and she drew a deep breath before pushing back the chair to stand up in front of Shepard. "Commander," Liara said, trying to conceal her nervousness best she could. Shepard had a presence, an intensity in her eyes and body that affected Liara more than made her feel at ease.

"You're looking better," Shepard said kindly, cocking her head slightly to one side as her eyes went over Liara's body. "How are you feeling?"

"Doctor Chakwas examined me, and determined that I am well."

"Good to hear. Have you had the chance to look around the Normandy beyond the medbay?"

"Yes..." Liara hesitated to answer, but Shepard seemed disinclined to just let her leave the sentence dangling.

"Yes?"

"Your crew regards me with suspicion," Liara said in a quick exhalation. "They look at me with much doubt, and I know that they are thinking solely of my mother. I am not like Benezia, despite the family ties that bind me to her. We... We haven't talked for a long while, but I cannot understand why she would choose to do this."

It was the truth. While the communications between them had been sparse, to say the least – non-existent in the last five years or so – the path her mother was accused of following didn't make any sense to her. Geth? War? It wasn't in any of her teachings, much less her way. "It puzzles me... Still, whatever her reasons are, I'm not her. I have no interest to follow her choices, much less so now if your claims are true."

Shepard regarded her with those cool eyes. "I believe you."

"Thank you, Commander, for saying that." Liara pressed out a small smile, but still felt unsure.

"So... What's your thoughts?" Shepard jumped up to sit on one of the stacked crates, pulling one leg up and tucking her booted foot under the other leg.

"On which subject?"

"Being you, right now." Shepard was a very blunt force of nature, Liara decided. She was however uncertain if she deemed it a good or bad thing. "I'm just thinking, here you are, an asari of one hundred and six, on a human Alliance ship, suddenly thrown into an exhilirating chase to save the galaxy."

There were many thoughts, many impressions, but Liara felt that she had to thread carefully. "I must admit, this isn't my area of comfort. I'm a scientist, not a soldier like you."

"So what does make you comfortable?"

"Researching, dig sites, being among Prothean ruins... I enjoy the solitude it offers, the chance to get away from others, if only for a little while."

"You don't much like other people, I take it?" Liara did not know what to say in reply, and Shepard seemed to catch on to that, quickly changing the subject. "Why were you on Therum?"

"A human mining company had come across a Prothean structure while they were drilling for element zero deposits. I was not called in until very late, and even then it was more a gracious gift from a researcher I worked with a few years he ago, because he knew I would be interested in the time period during which it was built."

"Towards the end of the Protheans?"

"Exactly. While most of the artifacts were mundane, the age of them seemed to indicate that it was used as a shelter when their end came. What was remarkable about it was how different it was."

"Different how?"

"As I said, a lot of the times when an intact site from the time of the Prothean empire's collapse is unearthed, you will only find everyday items, at best. There are no writings, no recordings, nothing that conveys what it was they went through during their final centuries. This was what led me to specialize in their extinction, because there was nothing to be found about it beyond speculative myths and poorly founded legends." Liara paused to breathe, wondering quietly if she was boring Shepard with her ramblings. The Commander, however, was leaning forward slightly, seemingly absorbing every word spoken from Liara's mouth.

Feeling encouraged by the interest she had managed to pique, Liara continued. "I wondered, how come such a great race could have simply vanished. The more I investigated, I found that it was a repeating pattern. Previous civilizations had risen before the Protheans, but at the height of their prime, they too vanished. What you have told me about the Reapers still seems strange, but I do not doubt what you saw in the visions."

"So, you were on Therum because it was related to your area of expertise?"

"I strayed a bit from the topic... As I said, it was an old colleague who invited me. These ruins were different from previous ones I have been to. These were untouched by privateers, and there were data disks, messages left on the tiles in the main structure. It was a treasure unlike any I had ever seen! I was beyond exalted, and was too caught up in transferring degraded, fragmentary data to my omni-tool to even notice when..." The geth showed up and slaughtered the rest of the researchers that had been there with her.

Remote worlds were dangerous, and she wasn't unused to defending herself when pushed. The geth, however, had been a total surprise, and while they had showed no mercy towards the others, they'd not even fired a single shot in her direction. It'd given her enough time to put up the force-field, and then had come the long hours of them looking at her – if you could call those lights for eyes – and static noises as they tried to blast their way through to her.

Shepard must have noticed a shift in Liara's face, because she gently steered them back on topic with a quick question. "So you found something related to the end of the Protheans?"

"Messages left in their own words. Perhaps they will reveal all we can hope to know of the Reapers, but I am hesitant to make that claim."

"Why?"

"When faced with death, very few turn to the great expanse of time and space, seeing nothing but their own end. You would only be able to think of those who mattered to you personally, and seeing as how the Protheans must have thought that the end of the entire galaxy was coming, I doubt Therum's ruins held the answers. It seems as if the ones who died there were just normal people, hiding from the threat – the Reapers – that was eradicating their entire species. I believe most of this data will be personal accounts of what happened, but perhaps, some small shard, some infinitesimal detail..." Becoming aware that she had talked almost ceaselessly since the Commander urged her to talk about Therum, Liara felt a bit too self-aware to continue, and cleared her throat. "I hope you found my obsessive observations of use, Shepard. My theories of the Prothean extinction are not well-recieved by other scholars, even less so by those who are not..." Liara trailed off.

"While I'm not a university graduate, I don't doubt what you have say," Shepard said, lopsided smile gracing her lips.

"You may have gained your knowledge in a different way, but it does not make it any less valid. Through the beacon, you learned of the true fate of the Protheans." Liara knew very well that Shepard might be the only one in the entire galaxy who held the clue to what had happened with the Reapers and Protheans, and it made Liara intensely curious about what hid in the mind of the Commander. "Will you ever be able to make sense of it, though?"

"It's been almost two weeks now, and nothing is any clearer," Shepard admitted. "It's as if something is missing, some key that will help me be able to keep them in my consciousness without giving me a migraine."

"The beacon was meant to interact with Prothean physiology. It's nothing short of amazing that it even responded to you." Liara hesitated for a moment, trying to decipher the indeterminable facial expression Shepard had. There was something she could not quite figure out about it: she wondered if it was part of the missing link in the social code that she had never unlocked. Liara had difficulties reading and interpreting the slight facial movements of other beings, and it was even worse with the Commander, whose face held a constantly cool expression.

It seemed as if the gruesome scar that ran down the side of her face held all her emotions in check, because Liara noticed a slightly pained look flicker across her features as she moved her muscles to smile, creating that strange lopsided grin. What Liara found more fascinating, however, was the Commander's voice.

Shepard had sounded so gentle and kind when talking to Liara as she hung suspended in mid-air in the ruins, hushing Liara's fear and fatigue with some carefully chosen words. Her voice had radiated trust and reassurance, and Liara had not doubted the Spectre's sincerity.

Then, there had been the sudden change. Shepard had snapped at the krogan that appeared as they were about to escape, exchanging some vicious words. Her voice had hinted at a poorly restrained anger underneath her surface, ready to be unleashed at any fool who dared to cross her path. The krogan, appreciative as his kind were of such tactics, had laughed at Shepard, who signalled to the human female next to her. It had been almost imperectible, but the other woman had caught on and put a shotgun round in the krogan's face in a split second.

Liara hadn't seen much more, as Alenko had pulled her along and pushed her behind the control panel of the elevator. Even then, all Liara had been able to think about was that over the noise of a collapsing ruin and relentless gunfire, was that the Commander's voice rang out clearly above it all, shouting short, coded orders to the two humans accompanying her.

When the din of battle had ended as suddenly as it had begun, Shepard had appeared in front of Liara. A vague shimmer of a mass effect field surrounded her as she offered Liara a hand. Liara, being the fool, had simply stared at the gloved hand: the long, slightly curved fingers, the way the hand trembled slightly, how dust stuck to the surface of the armor.

In the present, Shepard made a clicking sound with her tongue, snapping Liara out of her reverie in much the same way as the Commander had done in the ruins. Quickly gathering up her last shreds of courage, Liara looked straight into Shepard's light blue eyes.

"I find you fascinating," she blurted out. "You have been touched by Prothean technology, marked by their legacy. Think of all the things hidden within you, all the knowledge locked in there."

"It sounds like you want to cut me apart in a lab," Shepard replied, and the neutral facial expression she had made Liara want to bite her tongue.

"No! I did not mean to insiniuate... I did not intend to offend you. You're an interesting specimen, your participation in a study would be quite a contribution... No, that sounds even worse!" She bit into her tongue, hoping to still her verbose river. For all the studying she had done, for all the languages her sub-dermal translation implant had, she still could not convey what she meant to another sentient being.

"Calm down, Liara." Shepard laughed, her lopsided grin re-appearing. "It wasn't serious."

"Oh..." Liara closed her eyes briefly, feeling utterly embarrassed. She wanted to break down into atoms and vanish from the presence of the Commander, hoping that at such a basic level of existance, she would at least not be able to talk.

"Perhaps I need to work on my inter-species communication skills..." Shepard began, but Liara interrupted.

"No, no, I'm just... This is why I prefer to spend my time with data disks. I always make a fool of myself in the company of others. Please, pretend... Pretend this conversation never happened."

"I wouldn't go that far, Liara," the Commander said, jumping down from the crate and stepping closer to the doctor.

"I – I have to get back to my work." Liara fumbled with the words, and sat down on the chair, turning on her data console and opening the documents she had been working on before she had been interrupted.

Shepard's hand brushed against Liara's shoulder as she was leaving the storage room. "You should get some sleep."

"Of course, Commander."

The light hand left Liara's shoulder, and the door slid shut as she exited, but a faint heat lingered on the spot that Shepard had touched.

Liara, overcome by curiousity from the peculiar sensation, undid the clasps at her neck and peeled away the fabric until her shoulder was exposed to the chill air circulating throughout the Normandy. She angled her shoulder awkwardly, looking it over. There was no obvious change to her skin, nothing to indicate that a hand had touched it just a minute prior.

Liara kept staring at it, waiting for it to reveal why it was sending heat impulses through her entire body. Yet the more she looked, the less she understood why it was pulsating with pleasant warmth.

"I'm behaving like a child," Liara mumbled to herself as she adjusted the worn, dusty straps of her outfit. She carefully ran a hand over the surface of the fabric, but when she brushed over the spot, her fingertips barely grazed it and yet she felt a slight shiver in the back of her neck.


	3. Coffee with Interruptions

**Chapter III: Coffee with Interruptions**

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Awakening in the chilled air of the sleeper pod, Liara pushed it open and stepped outside on uneasy legs. She had never slept in one before, and the mild cross-species gas used to subdue and ease one into sleep was unfamiliar to her. It left her throat feeling raw and her eyes muddied.

She pulled at the steel-grey Alliance slacks she had been given, but the shirt was a bit too tight and kept creeping up her belly, exposing her blue skin. As she stood there, yawning and swaying slightly in misfitting clothes, she began to take in her surroundings.

The Normandy seemed to be in a lull, the only sound coming from the computer systems humming gently. Most of the screens in the command center were powered down, and even the lights had been dimmed, making for a rather dusky atmosphere in the crew quarters.

Liara's faintness slowly wore off, and she began stretching her stiff muscles in the cramped space between the rows of sleeper pods. She glanced at the other pods, trying to discern who was sleeping in them, but the opacity made it difficult to determine. There was a slight flicker of light coming from one, and she reached her finger out to touch the surface.

"Give the quarian some rest, Doctor," came an amused voice from behind her. She recognized it, and turned around to see a man, supported by crutches, grinning at her. "Good to see you up and alive."

"You're the pilot," she stated. His tasteless joke after she had been rescued from Therum's collapsing ruins had been a valuable lesson in human nature for her, but she still found it difficult to understand why Shepard had even bothered to smile at such a poor timing as the pilot had.

"And you're the one who doesn't appreciate my bad jokes," he replied. "Not that many do. Captain Anderson really didn't. I'm Joker, by the way. I would shake hands, but they're a little busy keeping my legs intact."

"Joker?"

"Real name's Jeff Moreau."

He inclined his head towards the mess area before he began moving towards it, hopping smoothly on the crutches. Liara followed cautiously, not quite certain what was wrong with him. She had never seen anything like it before: the limbs appeared to be without any muscle mass, scrawny as they were. Their movement transfixed her, if only because it was a novelty to her. When they suddenly came to a halt, she looked up at Moreau, his grin still intact as his eyes met hers.

"So, you're interested in this fine piece of man, are you?"

"Your legs are quite fascinating, Moreau," she said, her gaze flickering down briefly.

He sighed. "A man grows a beard for seven weeks, brushes his teeth, takes fairly regular showers, and yet all the girls want is what's below my waist."

"I, ah..." Liara understood the implied subtext behind his words, and she was at a loss for what to say in response.

"Look," he said, utterly serious: the sudden change of mood caught Liara off-guard. "The bones in my legs are hollow. Too much force on them, and they'll break. That's why I jump around like a cripple."

"Is it a sensitive subject, Moreau?"

"As long as you don't feel sorry for me, we're good," he said, easing himself down in a seat and leaning the crutches against the table. "I couldn't stand to cause any of the pretty ladies onboard any sorrow, especially over my creaky limbs. And really, call me Joker. Moreau's my mother."

"Should you not be piloting this ship?"

He chuckled to himself, but seeing Liara's confusion at his reaction, he straightened up. "You were out for a good while there, Doc. As soon as we got you off Therum, Shepard ordered us to head towards Feros. We're docked by the colony of Zhu's Hope."

"We're on Feros?" Liara couldn't believe what she was hearing. After all the years of hoping, of trying...

"This planet special to you?" Joker asked, leaning back in his seat.

"I always petitioned to have an expedition sent to Feros at my university, but after the volus colony fell apart a century ago, it was deemed too dangerous."

"Other species have tried to colonize this planet?"

"Yes, but none have succeeded. There are wild varren roaming through the ruins from when the krogan tried to settle there; many of the buildings are decaying rapidly, not to mention the problems with scavengers and privateers, trying to scrape together what little is left in terms of artifacts."

He didn't seem too interested in the history of Feros. "Huh."

"Where is everyone?"

"After the colony was secured, Shepard, the Chief and Wrex headed down into the sublevels to deal with some remaining geth. Tali and Garrus stayed behind, along with a team of the engineers, trying to get as much of the equipment they had there operational. By the time Shepard came by, they had fixed nearly everything, and the Commander sent them back to the ship. Most of them went to sleep straight away." Joker reached out to the counter behind him, his hand coming a bit short of touching it. He sighed and looked up at Liara. "Doc, a little help?"

He pointed at the item he wanted, and she willingly obliged, carefully unwrapping the piece of food and placing it on a plate before handing it to Joker.

"Or you could just have given me the package itself, you know. I don't need a plate to eat my vacuum-packed cake from."

Liara nodded, not really taking in his words, mind pre-occupied with Feros. "Is it possible to go outside?" she asked eventually.

Joker, having just bit off a large piece of the dark-brown dish, swallowed quickly, crumbs visible in his patchy facial hair. "Uh, sure. Up the stairs, through the airlock."

"Thank you," she called over her shoulder, grabbing her white coat from the locker she had been assigned before rushing up the stairs, her heart drumming loudly in her ears. For years, she had dreamed of visiting Feros; longed to gaze upon the buildings the Protheans had created.

She knew from her own experience that larger Prothean settlements rarely held the clues she sought to back up her research with, but she had still argued feverishly for an expedition to Feros, if only to gaze at the apex of their innovations. While architecture was not something she had studied extensively, she had snuck in on the odd lecture about it back at university, sitting in the back and admiring what the Protheans had managed to create. Feros was, after the Citadel, the highlight of their civilization.

She walked up to the edge of the docks and gazed out. The skyscrapers, in their geometrical glory, lined up outside with only the tops visible. They were remarkably intact, considering that fifty thousand years had passed. Below, she could see the dark clouds, slowly growing lighter from the rising sun.

Leaning her elbows on the concrete railing that enclosed the docks, smiling to herself. She had seen images and 3D-renders of it, but it could not be compared to seeing it in reality, with the cold air breezing against her skin and the smell of corrosion hanging in the air. The simplicity in their architecture appealed to her: it was straightforward, held a harmonic symmetry, and was beautiful. There was no other word for her to describe it by: tha fact that their legacy so prominently remained, despite the passage of time, left her awestruck.

Vaguely, she registered a faint buzzing noise behind her, but it wasn't until she heard a gunshot that she turned around in alarm. Lieutenant Alenko stood on the docks, a few paces away from her, holding a red pistol in one hand and a cup in the other. His stone-cold expression eased when she looked at him, and he waved his pistol towards a small pile of sparkling electronics on the ground.

"The geth keep sending small recon drones here," Alenko said, stepping on the remains of it before securing his gun. "Morning, doctor T'Soni. Sorry about the scare."

"I thought it was safe out here," she said, squatting down to get a closer look at the scraps, turning them over. A sharp-smelling, white liquid oozed out from the core, burning the remains beyond salvage.

"There's a geth invasion going on here, though I don't know how big it is. Doubt even the colonists do."

Liara brushed her hands off on her pants before standing up, coming face to face with the lieutenant.

"Thought you'd like some," Kaidan said, handing her the cup. The content steamed in the chilled morning air, and Liara looked down at the light-brown liquid, sniffing it cautiously.

"What is it?"

"Coffee, with sugar and cream added. Good for waking you up after some time in the sleeper pods. Clears your mind."

"Thank you, lieutenant," she said gently, raising the cup to her lips to taste it. The warm drink was smooth in her mouth, and held a strange, bittersweet taste. She sipped at it for a while, eyes half-closed, savouring that it wasn't tainted with an artifical taste. Her earlier attempt at eating the human food available in the mess had led to her worrying about having to live on such bland food for the duration of the mission, but if she could just have a bit of the delicious coffee, she guessed she would be fine.

"I take it you like it," Alenko said, leaning back against the concrete slab behind him. She swallowed the mouthful she had and nodded, giving him a slight smile.

"You are being very kind."

"I try. I'm sorry if I brushed you off yesterday. My biotic implant had a smaller flare-up, and it was causing me some pain."

"I see." Liara cradled the cup in her hands. She had read some about the issues that humans had encountered after discovering the potential in biotics, especially when they were trying to develop a stable implant to enhance and focus their abilities. Their situation was comparable to what the turians went through, from what she had gathered from the article: their biotics were nowhere near the level of asaris, but still they accepted pain and rigorous training to achieve whatever slight control they could exercise over their powers. It seemed an unworthy trade-off, but she was an asari: it was a natural occurence, a basic part of being asari.

She was crudely pulled out of her chain of thought by Alenko, who tugged her down sharply behind the concrete, making her spill the remaining coffee on the ground with a loud splash, droplets landing on both of them.

"Do you hear something?" he asked in a hushed voice, glancing towards the set of stairs at the other side of the dock.

"No, I..." The noise was repeated, slightly louder, definitely closer. "Wait. I heard that." Kaidan pulled the pistol from its holster at his side, and Liara felt her nerves tingling as she readied a biotic attack.

A pained scream cut through the air as one a human stumbled into view, one hand clutching at her head while the other was squeezing the trigger of a rifle, sending bursts of uncontrolled gunfire into the air.

"What is wrong with her?" Liara whispered, peeking around the corner of the crate she and Alenko hid behind.

"I'm not sure," Alenko whispered back. "But look, it's not just her."

He was right: following her was at least a dozen other humans, all of them screaming their throats raw, banging their heads against the walls, holding weapons in their hands. They all seemed to be in terrible pain, and as much as Liara wanted to rush out and help them, she was not sure if that was the right course of action, seeing as how they appeared to be barely aware of what was happening around them.

"Running through thorns," the first woman cried out, stumbling and falling to her knees, her rasping breath grating against Liara's ears with perfect clarity. "It hurts, it demands and it hurts!"

"We should get back into the ship, doctor," Alenko said, clearly disturbed.

"Isn't there something we can do for them?" Liara asked, her voice a bit higher than she had intended. A bullet flew past her, grazing against her arm. Out of instinct, she threw up a biotic barrier around her, and Alenko did the same.

The colonists, despite their obvious pain, gained some focus to their sluggish shuffle, readying their weapons, screaming out in a frightening, deafening cacaophony.

"What is happening?" Liara asked, stricken with panic, trying to catch her breath as she leaned over in the Normandy's airlock, attempting to calm herself enough so that her nervous system would not go into overdrive. On the other side of the hull, she heard the banging of the colonists. "That... That cannot be because of the geth. I have never seen anything like that before."

"We need to warn Shepard," lieutenant Alenko said. Liara took a deep breath as she stood up on unsteady legs. Alenko stood with his hand on the inner chamberlock, waiting for the on-going decontamination cycle to end.

She could see his concerned expression, the tension in his muscles as his fingers tapped impatiently against the panel. She felt her gut wrench itself over in worry for Shepard. Kaidan glanced over at her when she wrung her hands nervously, and for once, she noticed the subtle change in expression. They were both concerned, and their care for Shepard went beyond what a lieutenant should feel for his Commander, or what an asari to a human she had barely known for a day.

For a moment, they stood completely still in a silent, mutual understanding. Then the door slid open, and Alenko rushed into the cockpit, while Liara remained behind, blinking into the bright lights.


	4. A Traitor to Remember

**Chapter IV: A Traitor to Remember**

* * *

"Have you ever seen a turian tap-dance?"

Liara, curled up in the seat to the left of Joker's in the cockpit, looked over at the pilot warily. He had been telling strange jokes and questionable anecdotes ever since the Normandy had managed to establish contact with Commander Shepard again. The Commander was doing well, as far they could tell, and they were just waiting it out.

She had just survived through a story about what Joker had done to earn the ire of the famed Captain Anderson, and she wondered if she could take another absurd tale of his.

"You see, when I was on leave back on the Arcturus, there were a bunch of turian diplomats there, all getting wasted and challenging humans to dance-offs..."

"You're making this up," Kaidan said from the seat on Joker's right.

The Lieutenant had been closely following the Commander's progress back on the collapsed Prothean skyway, monitoring the situation with an intent eye; he had scarcely said one word to the two other beings in the cockpit, and Liara had been subjected to Joker's undivided attention. Not until Shepard had passed through the colony of Zhu's Hope had Kaidan pried himself away from the flickering screens and attempted to enagage himself in the conversation, mainly through a few, short interjections.

Liara stole a glance at the Lieutenant when she felt sure he wouldn't catch her. His concern for Shepard had almost been blatant, but it seemed as if Joker made a point of not touching upon that particular subject.

"I swear to the stick ambassador Udina has shoved up his ass, all of this is true!" Joker grinned as he turned to Liara. "You believe in me and Udina's ass, don't you, blue?"

"Such a pleasant idea you present me with, Joker," Liara said, the corners of her lips twitching slightly, and she was barely able to suppress the will to mirror Joker's mad grin. "I feel fortunate not to have met this ambassador, or I would have some mental images that should never have existed."

"Blue, you know, there's a lot of wonderful things people do with themselves. I'll tell you of the crazy events of the academy one day – you'll never be the same again, of course – but let me get back to the dancing turians. So, they were wasted beyond measure, when they start tearing up the dancefloor of this club, the Vagabond. My poor friend, Willow, got caught in the middle of them as they started with their tap-dance..."

"Joker!" Shepard's voice cut through the cockpit, jarring the three of them into alertness.

"Good to hear your voice again, Commander," Joker said, his proud grin appearing. "I don't know how longer I could have gone without hearing you shout obvious orders at me." He was beginning to tread the line of insubordination, but in some way, his arrogance was part of his charm. The asari knew that she would not have endured such bloated pride in the self in just anyone, but in him, it was almost endearing.

Shepard only gave out a grunt in reply to Joker's cheerful banter. "Could you send Liara up into the main colony?"

"Will do, ma'am. Joker out." Joker shut down the communication, then gave out a short whistle. "You ready to deal with the Commander, blue?"

Liara did not reply, but she simply heaved herself out of her seat, disembarking the Normandy without a thought for anything but seeing Shepard in the flesh again. What Joker had read into as anger had sounded like tense contemplation to Liara: Shepard's voice had not been as unrestrained as when she had lashed out to the krogan on Therum, but rather tense and tired.

Liara had to shake her head as she ascended the stairs to the colony; she had barely known the Commander for more than a day or two, and she was already beginning to listen to the nuances that her voice held, analyzing them? She was not one to get swept away. Emotions were fleeting and not always for the better.

Liara had to stop when she reached Zhu's Hope and take in the sight of the ruins. The roof had been obliterated, and a grey-blue sky spread out above her with dust swirled through the air, no intention to settle down anytime soon.

A faint scent caught her attention, and made her gag. It was an unbearable smell, making her shiver as she rounded the corner of the crashed ship, and she had to breathe through her mouth so as not to upset her olfactory glands with the putrid smell.

When she thought she had willed her caffeine-breakfast to stay down, she heard someone throwing up, followed by a deep, krogan laugh.

"What's the matter, Chief? Can't stomach a good fight?" The krogan, Wrex, had a distinct voice, the low rumble recognizable anywhere.

"I was perfectly fine until that asari popped out of nowhere," the Chief replied, hunched over, her fingertips visible as she grasped as the edge of the concrete slab that thankfully shielded Liara from the view of Ashley's expelled stomach contents.

"The idea of being inside that thing disgust you so much? Or is just the asari species? Speaking of which..." Wrex's smug expression made Liara wonder if he was trying to smile at her. He took a hold of the Chief's neck and pulled her up into a standing position.

"Doctor," Williams said tensely, before she paled again and hunched over, retching loudly.

"Get it all out," Wrex said, slapping Williams over the back loudly, much to the dismay of the human female, who cursed at him angrily. The krogan let out a strange sound that sounded like a laugh, but Liara couldn't be sure. "The Commander is in there, doctor," he said, nodding his head towards the open door of the freighter.

Some colonists were sleeping peacefully on cots in the narrow halls, no traces remaining of the strange, pained display she had witnessed just a few hours ago. It was beyond surreal for Liara, and she had to resist the temptation to examine their resting bodies closer.

She came to a tiny room, barely fitting the cot that the Commander was seated upon. Shepard was sitting with her head cradled in one hand, pistol in the other, pointing towards the corner by the door. When she heard Liara clearing her throat, she sighed and ran her fingers straight through her short, blonde hair.

"Liara," she said softly. "I found someone here that says she knows you." She nodded in the direction of where her pistol was pointing.

Upon seeing the seated commando, hands held behind her head, Liara registered that she should have felt more surprised at seeing the familiar face of Shiala. That stubborn, stern face: the steely expression that had followed her biotic training through her younger years, the narrowed eyes that were constantly searching for something. Liara felt... At home.

"I'm not sure if she is trustworthy," Shepard continued. "She heard the Chief mention your name and claimed she knew you."

"She... I..." Liara was unsure what she should say, what claim she could make of knowing Shiala anymore. They had not met for many years, but everything about the commando was the same, as if the years had not even passed. As if nothing had happened. "I know her. She was my teacher."

She looked between the two asaris, then nodded, lowering her pistol. "Sorry about that, Shiala," she said, getting up from the cot. "I just had to be sure."

"You're at war, Commander," Shiala said, lowering her arms, glancing at Liara. "War makes enemies out of families. Distrust is, and should be, your closest ally."

"I only distrust the unknown variables," Shepard said. "Then, there are those you trust in, because you can't do anything else." The intense blue eyes stared straight at Liara.

With both of the warriors having turned their full attention to her, Liara shifted the weight on her feet uneasily, unsure where she should look. She disliked being used as a argumentative device, and agonized over the seconds that inched by. It reminded her all too much of her childhood, and her mother's debates in which she wound up being used a point to be discussed.

Then, Shepard's lopsided grin came out, and she stretched as she stood up, yawning loudly.

"I have to go clean up the mess I made in the colony," Shepard said, moving to the exit.

As she passed by Liara, their hands brushed against each other for the briefest second. Liara turned her head to look at the human, and caught a glimpse of a small, soft smile on the Commander's face before she was gone.

Turning back to the other asari, Liara remembered why she had shied away from Shiala in her youth: the unyielding way her gaze would focus on her, as if nothing else could possibly matter. Shiala was a tranquil, collected commando on the outside, but she had a ferocious spirit within her. When her calm manners fell away, she could have torn through armies had she felt inclined.

"Do you want to talk about that?" Shiala asked, her eyes flickering down to Liara's hand momentarily.

Liara shook her head, clasping her hands behind her back.

"Of course," Shiala said, rising from her chair, eyes looking over Liara slowly. "You seem to have grown since I last saw you."

"Since you left with my – the Matriarch?" The question came out much more vicious than Liara had intended.

She had quietly put her emotions under wrap since that day when she arrived to her mother's mansion, only to find it completely abandoned. All the rooms were empty, the doors closed and everyone gone, barely any belongings left. Even Liara's room had turned into a bare, cleaned-out nothing. There had been no one left to ask or confront, and she had kept it all to herself – all the questions, all the feelings of having gone to see her mother and finding the emptiness. The reunion with Shiala made it resurface. It felt like a torrent she could barely reign in.

"There was nobody left when I returned home. You cannot imagine the sickening feeling of seeing Benezia's vibrant, lively home as deserted and quiet as a ruin."

"Liara –" Shiala tried to appease the younger asari, but Liara held up two fingers, feeling her nerve endings twitch with biotic energy.

"For years, I wondered why all you left me with was silence. I looked for you – for her – but found nothing. I wondered, because there were no answers. And most of all, I ached, because I was fumbling in darkness, trying..."

Between her digs, she had spent her meagre wage on buying pieces of information that led nowhere. She would catch glimpses of Benezia in a news broadcast, but as soon as the Matriarch had appeared somewhere, she had disappeared. All through it, she had bitterly remembered when, in her youth, she had longed for more solitude. When she had found herself completely alone in the galaxy, she had not been able to stand it.

"You left me with nothing. I have been existing in suspension, unable to... I..."

Liara closed her eyes. With a deep sigh, she dispelled the mass effect field that been building up.

Shiala took Liara by the elbow, guiding her out through the ship and into the open air, where the commando breathed in deep of the dusty air.

"You have to understand," Shiala began, voice low, "that Benezia never asked you to join us because she could not foresee what fate awaited us with Saren. A future with him led to millions of uncontrollable variables, and she was very hesitant about even letting any of her followers come with her. She demanded that none of us let you know what happened, or where we went." Shiala's hand came to rest on Liara's cheek. "In that aspect, she wanted you to live your life, and not hers. She respected your will to have your own life."

"Why did she join with Saren?" At least there was no desperation in her voice when she asked the question. Just a quiet resignation.

"She believed she could change the destructive path he had embarked on. However, he was far beyond what she could ever have conquered. Your mother... Benezia... She has changed. She is not who she used to be."

"What happened?"

"She lost herself to Saren. When – if – you see her, do not judge her too harshly. She has lost all interest for everything that does not benefit Saren." Shiala shook her head mournfully. "Now, with freedom and clarity, I wonder if she even is your mother anymore."

A heavy weight settled within Liara at those words. "What did he do to you? To her?"

"His words ensnared us. He had a charisma that made you listen, but there was something else with his ship... It was the one that enslaved us, ultimately. We became puppets; obedient tools, willing to do his every bidding. The last I remember of the Matriarch is a cruel, relentless husk of who she used to be. There is no remorse, no forgiveness. I wonder if she will even recognize you as her own, Liara."

"I... There must be some way to reason with her. Some way to bring her back to sanity."

"Your words are the same ones she spoke when she learned of what Saren had chosen to do." Shiala's lips stiffly moved to resemble a smile, but it quickly fell. "I believed in Benezia and her philosophy. I formed my life after it, and made my choices to be in line with her ideas. Before she left me here on Feros, I had a brief moment of lucidity, and asked her about them. She said that all she had taught me had been lies, and that the only truth was submission."

"It does not sound anything like her," Liara said quietly.

"As I said, she is no longer herself. Much has been lost, even more destroyed." Shiala shrugged her shoulders. "I will honour the remains of Benezia's philosophy. It's the least I can do. But, I will also stay here and help the colony all I can. It's broken and fragmented, and I need to make amends. Much of the suffering they endured was caused by me. And how about you? What path will you choose now?"

"I will follow Shepard."

Shiala nodded in approval. "The Commander is a strong person. As long as she does not forget that she is flesh and blood, she might just win this war." Then, she bowed her head ever so slightly. "Shepard waits for you. I hope we meet again, and under better circumstances."

"I hope so, as well."

"One more thing, Liara." Shiala put her arm around Liara's shoulders, leaning in close so that there was barely the width of a thumb between them. Liara could feel the other one's warm breath against her own lips as Shiala began whispering. "What lies ahead of you is a great thing. Greater than anything I have ever known. Fight for everything you hold dear, and if you die, let it be known that you were..." She searched for the correct word: speeches had never been a strong suit of the commando. "Glorious. Yes. Glorious."

Shiala let go, and Liara swallowed hard, moving to where the Commander was standing, waiting for her by the stairs.

Liara turned as she reached the stairs, looking back at the down-trodden colony. The few survivors were fixing with what could be fixed, while one woman limped around, taking record of what they needed. Shiala was offering her support to a wounded man who was struggling to get up. He looked at Shiala with doubt, and for a moment, Liara thought he was going to refuse her hand.

"Did I do the right thing?" Shepard asked, standing on Liara's side. Liara could feel the eyes on her, equally intense as before.

"You let her live, and she will never forget that," Liara replied, still looking at Shiala. The commando, oblivious to her protegées eyes, was supporting the man, patiently letting him set the pace as they moved. "She will value this immensely."

Liara wished to add that she valued it, as well. Though the exchange with Shiala had been brief, it had brought Liara out of the suspended existance she had endured, bereft of any familiarity in the wide galaxy. If she had never met Shepard, she might just have continued moving through the years, repeating her own motions, dulled to everything else, unaware of the fate of her mother.

Shepard had given her a sliver of hope, and Liara, ever the silent shadow, could simply nod her head and smile demurely at her as they left the colony. She had, through a simple act of pardoning a traitor, breathed a sigh of life into Liara.

She wished she could express her gratitude to Shepard. Through Shiala, some answers had been gained, and it made all the difference to Liara. Perhaps her mother's betrayal could be undone. Perhaps there was hope to uncover the secrets that lay ahead, and shine a ray of light to splinter the darkness that clouded their sight.

As the Normandy came into view, Liara decided on one thing: she would not let life slip her by again.


	5. Peeking Past Her Facade

**Chapter V: Peeking Past Her Facade**

* * *

After Feros, Shepard had quietly withdrawn to her own quarters, claiming she was wrapped up in official paperwork. She only seemed to exit when the Normandy entered a new system, and then to recieve a report on the planets of interest. She had sent down squads to a few of the planets, letting them fight off privateers and slavers that she deemed would have to be dealt with.

While Chief Williams and Wrex seemed to enjoy the action on the ground, the rest of the crew were going about their own business in keeping the Normandy running smoothly. Despite the relaxed surface, Liara could feel an apprehension that made for a tense atmosphere. A rumour floated around that Shepard had no clue as to where they were going next. Another one held firm that the Commander was unwilling to make any progress, caught up in drifting aimlessly from star system to system for personal reasons.

Liara was unsure if there was any truth in the flighty rumours. She had grown doubtful of most sentences whispered in the mess hall, trying not to listen to them as she would grab a snack to bring up to the pilot. Joker would, while strewing crumbs all over the cockpit with his grand gestures, explain in excruciating detail why a lot of the stories flitting about the Normandy were just rumours, and little else.

He also seemed to find a strange joy in dissecting human behaviour for the doctor's viewing pleasure, but she did not mind. He had grown on her. His tasteless jokes and his way of staying on top of everything that was going on aboard the Normandy helped her understand the intricate things happening onboard.

When he finished with his rather massive late-shift snack, she gathered up his plates and bid him a good night. He made a lewd comment about sleeping, and she shook her head: the man was incorrigable.

On her way down, she passed by Kaidan Alenko, and she gave him a friendly smile, which he returned. While they were both circumnavigating around the issue that was Commander Shepard, they had grown to have quite a civil acquaintance. He was an intelligent man, who could carry on a conversation in a well-versed way, and she eagerly listened to his stories of Earth. When he had the time to spare, he was quite efficient with satiating her curiosity on the most varied topics.

Of course, their silent, shaky truce only stood because they were cleverly not talking about a certain someone. In a way, Liara feared what might unfold once Shepard left her quarters and came back to actually being in command. The balance she had attained with Kaidan could easily be upset.

Liara passed through the mess hall on her way to the medbay, giving the door control a light tap with her index finger before she entered. When she stepped over the threshold, she paused, looking at the back of Shepard as the human was crouching in front of a cabinet, shifting around boxes impatiently.

"Shepard?" Liara said. "I thought you were sleeping..."

"Well, I would be, if it wasn't for this headache." She closed the cabinet she had been surveying and moved to the next. "Chakwas is alseep, though, so I can't bother her. I need to find where she keeps the migraine medicine for lieutenant Alenko. It's the only one that works on me..." With a triumphant noise, she pulled out a small, white box, and opened it up with a snap, rolling one of the small pills between her thumb and forefinger.

"You won't tell on me, will you?" She tried to smile, but it turned into a groan, and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "I feel like I'm paying for a three-day shore leave on the Arcturus. Not entirely fair, in my opinion."

"May I ask what is the cause of these headaches?"

"The Cipher, I think." Placing the small pill on the tip of her tongue, she let it roll back into her mouth before she chewed it into smaller pieces and swallowed.

Liara nodded to herself. It seemed reasonable that the Cipher, which Shiala had claimed was the collected ancestral memory of the Protheans, would cause the Commander problems. Even during the debriefing after Feros, Shepard had looked ash-grey, but she had sat straight up nonetheless, listening to the input from her crew. The unnatural colouration of her skin was the only clue that something was amiss.

"Is that why you have been withdrawn these past days?" Liara asked quietly. "Because of this headache?"

Shepard ran a hand through her hair, nodding. "The headaches make me sleepless, and the insomnia gives me migraines. It's just one, vicious cycle." She waved her hand dismissively. "It'll pass. Pain does."

"Perhaps."

"Speaking of which..." The lighthearted tone of Shepard's voice changed. "I don't want to pry, but the asari we met on Feros... I understood that she was important to you."

"Shiala? She was. And is, perhaps. When my mother and I moved to Thessia, Shiala was my biotics trainer. She has an excellent command of it, and was an acolyte of Benezia's. I think she might have been the only follower I respected."

"You don't like Benezia's teachings?"

Liara closely watched the human's face: there was a slight crease between her eyebrows, but otherwise, her face was a placid surface, all emotions chained in by the scar that still shone, as if recently created.

The thought crossed Liara's mind that she did not actually know when the scar had been inflincted.

"I would not claim to actually dislike them, it was just that I heard them repeated infinitely, and I could not help but doubt them, and doubt those around me who followed blindly, without question. To be loyal to a cause that you do not fully comprehend... That is what made me think less of the maidens that were her students."

"That sounds like a smart approach to the situation. We had a couple of those issues in my – family," her face scrunched up slightly at the word, " – but none of us were striving to be politicians."

Liara knew enough than to push Shepard further about her family. She herself felt strange discussing the Matriarch – her only family that she knew of – and the Commander seemed to share the sentiment in regards to hers. Still, it furthered her curiosity: why the sudden burst of emotion in her face over it?

Questions that she wondered about. Questions to which she had no right to demand an answer for.

Shepard's hand sneaked up to her forehead and pressed down. Liara, without thinking, laced her fingers in with Shepard's and gently pried the human's hand away from her forehead so she could see her face, thinking only about trying to read the subtle changes on it. It was when moving the hand down that her fingertips brushed against the Commander's lips that Liara noticed the touch of skin against her own. A small sigh passed by her own lips, and those intense eyes focused on her.

"What did Shiala do to your mind?" Liara asked, quickly letting go of the hand, trying to regain her posture.

Shepard's eyes lingered on Liara's, but the intensity dissapiated after some seconds. "She joined us together. It was... Strange. It wasn't a meld, was it?"

"There is a difference between a meld and simply joining two minds together. During a joining that is done with a non-asari, the asaris are the active ones, and the other individual cannot enter the asari's mind in quite the same way."

"Good to know that I didn't..." Shepard made a movement with her hand, her lopsided grin appearing briefly. "Well. She gave me the Cipher, and it's supposed to help me decrypt what I'm seeing."

"Is it?"

"I don't know. The understanding is coming slowly. Sometimes, I think I have it, some part clears up, but then it gets muddy again, and the headache strikes."

"I have an idea. If Shiala joined her mind to yours, I could do the same. Perhaps, through our joining, I could help you understand what it is you see. My knowledge of the Protheans should come to a more... Palpable use, than just describing their former glory."

Shepard nodded wordlessly, much to Liara's relief.

"Then... Relax. Close your eyes. And..." Liara placed her naked fingertips on Shepard's temples, feeling the slight pulse throbbing. She breathed in deep before she closed her own eyes; she had not initiated a joining, ever, and she was more frightened than she was willing to acknowledge.

"Embrace eternity." She whispered the old, traditional words to remind herself that she was not the first, and would not be the last, to do it. For a brief moment, she could sense the meaning the words held, the obscure idea of eternity, stretching out before the finite point of space and time that she found herself in... Then, she turned her focus to Shepard's mind.

There was much resistance put up, hindering Liara from an easy access. She had been told that such was to expect when joining with a non-asari, but she had never dared to imagine that it could be such an intense opposition. It was like running knee-deep against the ocean waves, but Liara's determination made her certain.

She broke through the first obstacles, and a brief emotion fluttered through her: she recognized it as belonging to Shepard. A desire that seemed to be blossoming in her, but as quickly as Liara had brushed against it, it eluded her grasp.

Liara pushed through the barriers Shepard's mind threw up.

_Shepard, wiping the sweat off her brow as she set up the last tech mine over a doorway. In the distance, she heard the gunfire coming closer: the men she had sent out ahead were making their way back. Barely. Their ragged breathing were all over her com radio, but she turned the volume down and backed up with the rest of her team further down the corridor, readying her pistol. _

_As the last man still alive staggered through the doorway, she saw the batarians coming. They punched through the corporal's shields with little effort... And it sounded like they were laughing. _

_Enraged, Shepard threw her pistol to the side and stepped out in the middle of the corridor. "Hey!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "Want some real meat? Want a true price to take home? Then take me!" _

_The batarians walked right into her trap. Her carefully placed mines went off the second they stepped over the invisible line, overheating their weapons and stunning the biotics. With a flick of her fingers, she unleashed a biotic attack. This time, she was the one smiling. _

Liara gasped. The strength of Shepard's mind was taxing on her, and she felt her physical body beginning to weaken. Glimpses of someone else's life were fluttering past her, few putting up enough resistance to warrant lingering on, until she stumbled again, caught in a memory.

_She quickly hooked up the card she had swiped from the rich kid to her stolen omni-tool, patiently cracking it open and draining the account to the one she had managed to set up after having had her biometrical information changed. With a shudder, she recalled the procedure: the iris transplant, the re-shaping of her fingerprints... But at least it had paid off. She had a last name. A bank account. A semi-legal existance. _

_She was no longer one of the kids that ran in the streets, nameless, faceless, unacknowledged by the rest of the city as they moved through the shadows. _

_She wasn't helpless anymore, having carved out her own piece of space, her own little land beginning to flourish._

And then, Liara broke through to the vision.

Flesh and metal, screams: bursts of light and then, overwhelming darkness. Planets, glimpses, all too quick, all too sudden.

She could identify the brief scenes of fleeing Protheans on the Feros skyways, but what were they fleeing? And a lone hand, reaching out towards a darkened sky, a drilling noise cutting through her mind.

Screams. Endless screaming. Thousands of voices, rising up together, woven together in a cacaphony of discord, pain and utter, complete fear. The sound of metal upon metal, then metal upon flesh, then just the cold surface of metal pressing against her.

It was obviously fragmented, as if someone had ripped pieces of it out by force. There were elements that were supposed to be within the vision that were gone. It was all too fast, and she could not see anything beyond what Shepard already knew. Reapers, extinction, the end of everything: it was a warning, but what else? It was only half of what should be there.

When she had looked the entirety of the vision over, she severed the connection.

Blinking her eyes, she stumbled backwards, suddenly outside of Shepard's mind. She had broken the joining too abruptly, she noted to herself, because it was not supposed to be a rough awakening. Still, the vision was etched in her mind as well, and that was what had mattered, in the end.

"So vivid," Liara mumbled to herself. She felt incredibly light, and somewhere in the back of her own mind, she registered that she must be fainting. For a brief moment, there was a comforting darkness that washed over her senses, drowning out the surroundings. Her body disintergrated, and she felt as if she was drifting away... However, she pulled herself out of it, and opened her eyes to see Shepard's furrowed brow and narrowed eyes.

"You look... Are you okay, Liara?" There was some concern in her voice that Liara had not heard before.

"Your mind is very strong, Commander. It exhausted me."

"Sorry about that," Shepard said, one corner of her mouth tugged upwards in a smile. Liara realized that the arm she was feeling supporting her was Shepard's, and she moved to stand up on her own. Still, her hand lingered on Liara's waist, heat radiating through the layers of fabric between their skin.

A moment followed where their eyes met. Liara felt a flutter throughout her being as she studied the light blue irises, then followed the straight line of her nose, noticing the slight curvature of a bump on it. The dry, swollen lips with scar tissue sprawling out from the middle of the bottom one, spilling down over her chin and onto her sharp jaw.

Liara was slowly mapping out the features of Shepard's face, unable to pry herself away from the enchanting body heat.

When her eyes reached the scar on Shepard's cheek, Liara felt the compelling urge to reach out a finger and run it along the gruesome pink tissue. Shepard sighed softly at the touch, leaning her cheek against Liara's palm. For what felt like an eternity, Liara stood completely still, unable to move or register anything beyond the heavy-lidded eyes looking at her and the rough scar tissue underneath her hand.

"Commander?" A voice interrupted them, and Shepard quickly untangled herself from Liara, casting a brief glance at the intruder.

"So, as I was saying," Shepard said, voice bereft of any hint of emotion. "I think that might be of some interest to you as well. We're hitting groundside in ten hours, so get some rest, Doctor T'Soni." She gave Liara a nod. "Thanks for the help with the headache, by the way."

Shepard slid away from the medbay and passed the one who had interrupted. Liara, still feeling dazed from having joined her mind with anothers, took a few moments before she saw who it was.

If Liara had thought the Commander had a way of making her face into an indeterminable mask, Kaidan surpassed his commanding officer by lightyears. All he gave her was one short look that told Liara nothing: there was no flicker across his face, no emotion, just two dark eyes that met hers.


	6. A Mystifying Artifact

**Chapter VI: A Mystifying Artifact**

* * *

The uncharted world Shepard had taken Liara to had been a strange little mystery of its own.

They had found the camp of a missing survey team, long since deserted: Shepard had checked the remaining logs, which mentioned finding a strange artifact in the caves. After that particular log entry, the posts had grown incoherent, with little meaning to be found among the broken sentences: the last entry simply read _And let this flesh be their metal_.

Shepard had clearly been disturbed by the entire log, and she decided that they would explore the mine for a clue as to what happened. Gunnery Chief Ashley Williams, who accompanied them, had merely shrugged her shoulders at that and flicked off some dust from her pistol, muttering something into her suit radio about 'walking into traps like there's no tomorrow'.

The mine maintained a minimum atmosphere, and once inside, airlock sealed properly, Liara opened up her helmet and sniffed the air.

"So what kind of a place is this?" Ashley asked over her shoulder, walking in front of the two others.

"I know that with humanity's rapid expansion, you have started mining unclaimed worlds for valuable metals and minerals," Liara replied. "Often you seem to stumble upon caches of Prothean artifacts, or those of other long-forgotten races." The warm, humid air of the cave made a fluttering shadow of fog appear on the inside of her visor when she exhaled through her nose, and she felt a bead of sweat trickle down across her forehead.

"It's not like any other race is actually showing interest for these worlds," Ashley said, pushing open the heavy metal door leading further in.

"It is actually because of humanity's rapid advance and curiousity that I have been able to form my theories on the Prothean extinction," Liara said. "Your advancement in this galaxy has led to quite a number of discoveries."

"Lucky us," Ashley muttered, opening another set of thick metal doors. Stepping through, a vast cave opened up around them, majestic stalactites hanging from the ceiling. Spread around the entrance were many dusty crates, as well as a great amount of mining equipment, neatly lined up along the wall, waiting to be put back into use.

"Seems like the regular situation," Shepard said. "Company encounters old artifacts, mining gets halted while a team investigates it." She popped off the lid of a box and gazed inside. "Strange, though. There's plenty of food rations in here."

Chief Williams cursed suddenly.

"Husks," she whispered, pointing towards bodies standing in the distance, glowing faintly blue. "Do you think they've noticed us yet, Skipper?" A bone-chilling growl cut through the air, answering Ashley's question.

"Ash, one of these days, I'm going to tape shut your mouth and dump you in a dark hole," Shepard grumbled.

"Promises, promises," Ashley teased, grinning as she put the finger to the trigger of her assault rifle.

The cave exploded in a rush of light as ammunition fired rapidly from Ashley's weapon, while Shepard used her biotics to juggle the husks in the air. Liara watched, mesmerized, almost forgetting the threat itself until she saw one husk rushing towards her – she quickly pushed it back and was about to shoot it with her pistol when Ashley finished it off with a shotgun round to the head, spraying dark liquid and glowing electric nodes all over the cave floor.

With that, the last husk had fallen and Shepard declared the area safe with a heavy sigh as her mass effect barriers wavered and finally vanished. Ashley rolled her shoulders, still holding her rifle in hands, claiming that she didn't think it the least bit safe until they were off the planet. She moved slowly after the Commander, the two walking a bit ahead of Liara, but stopped when she reached the center of the cave.

"This church thing," Ashley said, pointing at blackened bars enclosing around a dimly glowing orb, "it's just like the one we saw on Feros. The geth were worshipping it. Their orb was stronger, though. This one seems older, and... Broken."

"Interesting," Liara said, hunching down in front of it. "Why would the geth be worshipping it?"

"Maybe they're looking for God?" Ashley shrugged, passing Liara, hurrying her step to catch up with Shepard.

Liara activated her omni-tool, making a scan of the strange structure. It looked like a cage to her, but she recognized it from a mandatory lecture on safety precautions while scouting across uninhabited worlds. It was one of the many artifacts that were linked to the phenomenon of machine cultists: a group of sentient beings would come across one, and soon, they would be gone, replaced with husks.

So far, no-one had come to a conclusive reason as to why it happened. Every other decade, a new report would come in of a research team gone missing, or an abandoned mercenary camp found with only mysterious messages and husks left behind.

As she waited for the scan to render a 3D-model for her personal notes, she thought she heard a slight noise. Looking over her shoulder, she saw that there was nothing to generate such a buzz behind her; it must have been coming from the very construct itself.

Straining to hear it, she leaned forward, one hand pressing against the smooth black surface. At the moment her gloved hand touched it, she felt a shiver moving down her spine, and the signal increased, the light orb intensifying briefly as she heard a whisper just behind her. A whisper, barely there, yet unmistakable in its presence, as if demanding that she acknowledge it...

"Liara!" Shepard's brusque voice snapped Liara out of her thoughtful reverie, and she removed her hand from the structure as she stood up. The orb weakened back to its former state, looking as if nothing had happened. Liara felt unnerved by the entire episode, shrugging to attempt and get rid of the feeling as she went to look what was going on.

The two humans were retreating back towards Liara, shooting at the approaching wave of mindless husks, whose groans echoed through the cave.

"Traps, Skipper, traps!" Ashley shouted over her own gunfire. "I tell you about them, but do you ever listen?"

"Less talk, more shooting!" Shepard replied, hitting a husk hard over the skull with her pistol, cracking it wide open.

Acting quickly, Liara determined the centre of the group, and created a singularity point there. As the husks were drawn into it, she let Shepard and Ashley pick them off with their weapons as Liara circled around a crater, getting a better angle of the remaining ones. Using her biotic powers, she disabled them long enough for Ashley to come to her side and put some ammunition rounds through the flailing bodies. When the mass effect fields wore off, the corpses dropped to the ground, the water they landed in splashing up around them.

Shepard, strapping her pistol to her side, counted the bodies under her breath. "That accounts for the entire survey team," she said grimly. "I guess we better leave and report of this to ExoGeni."

"Right behind you on getting out of here," Ashley said, pulling off her helmet completely as she dabbed at the sweat that had appeared on her forehead.

The walk back up through the mineshaft strained on Liara's muscles, but she pushed on determinedly, keeping up with the two well-trained soldiers ahead of her. To keep her mind off the dull pain in her thighs, she eavesdropped on the conversation they were having.

"There was a reason I sent you on those missions with Wrex," Shepard said to Ashley, picking up some previous thread that Liara had no previous knowledge of.

"I just thought you liked to see him whack me over the head with his shotgun," Ashley replied, voice sweet. As her head turned slightly towards the Commander, Liara could see the wide smile upon Ashley's face.

"Did he beat some sense into you then?"

"The bump that's there didn't come from being clumsy, you know." Ashley gingerly fingered the back of her head, hissing as she skimmed over it.

"No qualms about working with them anymore, I take it?"

"To be honest, I doubted them, and still do, but that's only because I doubt everyone on the premise that they're going to doubt me. You didn't have to work your way out of the shadow of your family's name. The aliens didn't do anything wrong to my family, but I guess I went on the strong defense to compensate. To make sure I wasn't the alien-pleaser my grandfather got painted to be."

"You've got a long career ahead of you if you'd just wash your mouth once in a while."

"Thought that was part of my charm."

"Let your defenses down a bit, and a little bit less of acid response to the insults flung at you."

Ashley grunted. "Defenses are good. What I really hate is anyone gluing their heart on their sleeve and parading around, expecting everything to be fine and dandy, blissfully ignorant of the day when someone comes along and not only stomps on the heart, but puts a cryo round or thirty-eight through it. You have to learn that you can't trust in the good of others, because it's not just a strange kink in human nature, it's a glaring flaw in all sorts of lifeforms: destructive and cruel behavior are immense amounts of fun."

"So cheerful an outlook."

"You know the saying, Skipper. Schadenfreude is the only true joy."

A loud metallic rasp cut through Liara's mind, and she stopped in her tracks, listening intently.

She suddenly felt a slight tingle in the back of her neck, as if there was something nestling its way into her head. Removing her helmet with her left hand, her right one reached up to her neck, but as she brushed over the skin folds of her head, she felt nothing out of the ordinary.

The same noise that had caught her attention down in the cave called out to her again, lingering in her mind, grazing against her hearing, barely there yet something she could not pry herself away from.

She turned her head to look down the path she had traversed: the signal flickered, and then grew stronger in her mind. It was completely unintelligble, but it was disturbing to her. She just wished it would quiet down, because it was beginning to grind against her nerves ever so slowly. She felt inclined to go back to it, to see if she could find some way to shut it off...

"Liara?" Shepard's soft voice called out, bringing Liara out of her reverie. "Is everything okay?" The two humans were suiting up, already up by the airlock door. The Commander's visor was down, and Liara could not see the blue eyes of hers, but she knew that they were regarding her closely.

She still heard the faint trace of a whisper, and her jaw tensed. "I will be. Please. Let us leave this place now." She was convinced that if she just got off the surface of the planet, it would surely not bother her anymore.

"The Normandy should be coming down around now," Ashley said before she pulled down the visor completely on her helmet.

After the Normandy picked them up, Liara and Ashley stayed on the lower deck as Shepard headed upstairs for the communications room to send off a report. The two of them removed their armor in silence, Liara mulling over what she had experienced in the cave as she gracefully slid out of her light suit, folding it neatly before she put it in her assigned locker.

"You've got some biotic skill there, Doctor," Ashley said as she was unstrapping her armor, letting piece after piece fall to the floor with a loud clatter. "But I guess all asaris are like that," she added quickly, as if unwilling to offer any praise.

"And you're an excellent warrior, Chief Williams," Liara offered in return, rather distracted. She could no longer hear the low noise humming through her mind, but she wondered about what it could have been.

Ashley's lips tightened to a thin smile, and she started picking up her armor from the floor, placing it neatly on her workbench.

"Check your guns before you head up," Ashley said as she began polishing her armor, removing the stains the husks had caused upon the red plates.

Liara picked up the black pistol she had put in her locker earlier, looking it over for any obvious damage. It had been given to her by Shepard, but she had barely used it: she had not trained extensively to use weapons, and found the feeling of holding a gun in her hands a peculiar sensation. Of course, she could do the basic thing of killing things with them, but was a bit more lost when it came to the maintenance of them.

Ashley must have seen the confusion on Liara's face, because she took the pistol out of Liara's hands. "Let me take care of it," she said. "The Commander got a few new upgrades that she wanted me to install for you, anyway."

"Thank you, Chief."

"Yeah, well," Ashley mumbled, getting to work without any further ado.

Liara left the lower deck and, knowing she would be unable to sleep while the adrenaline was still fresh in her veins, gathered her notes from the medical lab and settled down in the empty mess. She made herself a cup of coffee, as she had been shown by lieutenant Alenko during their truce – her mind quickly skimmed over him, focusing on stirring down the right amount of milk and sugar instead. She had not talked to him since before he had walked in on her and Shepard in the medbay, and she still had not figured out what to say – if there even was something that she could say.

As her work on Prothean extinction had been put on a temporary hold, she started writing on an article that she wished to submit to one of her professors. In it, she presented her findings on the artifact encountered on the planet, as well as the presence of husks there, drawing parallells between previous incidents and linking it together. Leaning back after two long hours of writing without cease, she looked the article over. She had done as well as she could with the speculative piece, but she still struggled with reaching a conclusion that could be considered as somewhat valid.

She sighed. She did not have a conclusion, just findings. The signal was inexplicable, as well, and she could not add it to the article with any certainty. It could all just have been her mind playing a cruel trick, yet... The same feeling that had emerged when she had found some rather distinctive evidence that supported her theory of a cycle of extinctions, pre-dating even the Protheans, returned to her. It nagged at her feverishly, but she pushed it down.

She saved and closed the document. If she stayed with Shepard a bit longer, she was sure she would find the answers she needed to write something less speculative and more solid. It simply was a matter of patience, and when it came to her research, she had plenty of it.

"Good evening, crew of the Normandy." Joker's interrupting voice on the intercom system made Liara look up from the computer screen. "We're in contact with a communication buoy, so I suggest you take this time to send off that disgustingly dirty mail to your wife, husband or partner of choice. While you're at it, surf the extranet instead of actually doing some work. Please note that the Alliance pays to filter out all fetish sites, so don't even try. Contact will be maintained for two hours. Joker out."

Liara tapped her fingers against the table thoughtfully, before she opened up an extranet browser and typed in her search terms.

Ever since she had joined consciousness with Shepard, she had wondered about the Commander's history – who she had been before they had met, what had led to her becoming a Spectre; to be more precise, what shaped her into the woman she was. Into the woman that Liara found so strangely fascinating.

The glimpses that she had seen in Shepard's mind had piqued curiousity: the batarians she had been fighting, the alley wherein she had been hiding from the law enforcement, the hungry little child at her side... What importance had these scenes played in Shepard's life?

A minute and a few clicks later, Liara had established one thing: there was a myriad of articles on Shepard. Most of them were published after she became a Spectre, but in return, they were very eloquent and comprehensive. Picking one of the top twenty at random, she opened it and began reading.

_Torfan, 2178. In retaliation for the Skyllian Blitz upon humanity's foremost colony Elysium, the Systems Alliance instigated a raid upon the moon. A den for criminals and mercenaries, it was mainly populated by batarians._

_The actions undertaken by some officers have been called into questioning, mainly those by Lieutenant Shepard, promoted to the rank of Commander after the success of the mission. With brutal efficiency, she worked her way through the base, emerging with less than half of her original squad still alive. _

The article made a point of questioning the suitability of Commander Shepard as a Spectre, drawing attention to the allegded executions of surrendering batarians and her willingness to sacrifice the soldiers under her command. When it started subtly hinting at poorly concealed xenophobia from the writer, Liara wrinkled her nose and navigated away from the site.

All the rest of the articles she found mainly covered Shepard's military career, and many of them noted the lack of information about Shepard's youth beyond what files had been made public by the Alliance – that she was discovered as a biotic at seventeen and implanted at the same age, and that she enlisted on her eighteenth birthday. There were also mention of many street gangs in countless megacities that claimed to have had her amongst them, but it seemed a popularized opinion that she had only associated herself with one: the Ten Street Reds of New York.

There was a recent, if brief, video interview with her. In it, Shepard remained a rigid officer, unwilling to divulge any further information than she felt she had the right to. The reporter was slamming her head against a cold wall, recieving nothing, and Shepard was not even remotely interested in entertaining the poor interviewer.

The whole spectacle made Liara smile. Her own mother, Benezia, had been a renowned political and spiritual influence, and she had always led those who interviewed her into believing that they were asking Benezia the questions she was unwilling to answer. The truth had often been the opposite, and each interview was a testament to her mother's clever ability of manipulating her own image.

Shepard, however, seemed completely unconcerned with how she was seen. There were very few public statements made by her; most of were from her commanding officers, some from those who had served underneath her, but not a single revealing word could be found that had been uttered from the myth's own lips.

All her research had led Liara to three facts: Shepard had grown up on the human homeworld, she had been a major force behind the Alliance's assault of batarian strongholds during the last years, and she was even more a riddle than she had been before Liara had tried to research her history.

Liara turned off the computer with a sigh, and leaned back in her seat, sipping the ice-cold coffee. As soon as she had opened up one part of Shepard, another one closed and slid away from view.


	7. Unravel a Story Between the Drinks

**Chapter VII: Unravel a Story Between the Drinks**

* * *

Liara smoothened out the crease in her top and looked herself over in the mirror. The thin, loose-knit jacket she wore was of a neutral dark grey, and her plain white top underneath looked decent enough with the black pants. A simple outfit in a basic palette, but at least it did not clash against her light-blue skin tone.

She was all too nervous for her own good.

The Normandy had reached the Citadel few hours prior, and Shepard had gone ashore to discuss something with the Council. After an hour, Joker had relayed a message from the Commander: a three-day shore leave for Normandy crew. While most of them had cheered and promptly disembarked the starship, Liara had wondered why there had been such a sudden change of plans: Shepard had told her that it would only be a brief layover, at most.

Nonetheless, Liara had no interest in exploring the Citadel, and she had intended to stay aboard for the duration. Her plans, however, had been interrupted when Joker had hopped into the lab and cheekily told her that the Commander had asked if Liara was interested in dinner with her. Liara had expressed doubt, but Joker had shook his head and told her the time and place, saying he already accepted on her behalf.

If he had not been a cripple, and she had not been in possession of a conscience, she would have used her biotics to give him a slight nudge towards the other end of the ship.

Liara leaned in close to the mirror, examining her face for a moment, before she decided she had had enough of her own vanity for a year, and stepped out into the medbay. Doctor Chakwas was seated at her desk, reading through a medical journal.

"I hear you're having dinner with the Commander," Chakwas said calmly, eyes on the journal in front of her. "Please make sure she doesn't drink herself into a stupor. I will have to deal with enough inebriated marines when this shore leave is over."

"I will try," Liara said, nervously adjusting her jacket. "Could I ask you something?"

Chakwas closed the folder and looked up at Liara. "Go ahead."

"Do I look alright?"

Chakwas raised an eyebrow. "Why are you so concerned? It's just the Commander: you'll be lucky if she has no visible blood stains on her clothing. And yes, you look alright."

Liara gave Chakwas an appreciative nod and left the medbay, passing through the empty Normandy as she made her way to the airlock. Joker made a low whistling sound when she passed by his station, but she shook her head and exited the ship.

After a brief journey with a rapid transit shuttle, Liara stood outside the restaurant Duality, studying the blossoms that decorated the entrance. Their sweet scent was unfamiliar to her, but they looked like the nervun blossoms from the gardens surrounding Serrice back on Thessia. There were other decorations laced into the flowers that she could not entirely place: they seemed completely alien to her.

When she entered, it became clear to her upon seing the clientele: it was a restaurant dedicated to offering both asari and human cuisine. She glanced at the nearby tables – she could recognize the traditional Serrice cakes that one human female was savouring, and the sweet scent of the thiery blossom salad reminded her of her mother's garden.

A smiling man approached her, asking if she had a reservation. Liara stated her name and the man nodded, leading her through the restaurant to a secluded table in the back, cleverly hid behind a stained glass wall with vines curling across it, the red flowers in full bloom. Shepard was already seated, sipping a dark golden liquid liquid from a short glass.

"Hey there," Shepard said as Liara sat down, putting her glass on the table. "Joker mentioned that you hadn't left the Normandy, and I didn't want to dine alone."

"I appreciate the invitation," Liara said, opening the menu in front of her. She tried to read what was offered, but could hardly focus on the brief descriptions of each dish, thinking only of the human seated across the table. A question nagged at her though, and she put the menu down, looking at Shepard.

"This shore leave was not planned," she noted.

"No," Shepard replied, eyes still scanning the menu, "it wasn't."

Liara hesitated briefly, before she decided to press the matter. "Why?"

"The Council wants us to go to the Terminus Systems."

Liara knew of the Terminus, and she had carefully avoided ever straying too close to those systems during her excursions in the Attican Traverse. "What awaits us there?"

"The end of the galaxy? I don't know. Neither does the Council. They just gave me something vague about a special task group that had gone missing, and a distorted signal that revealed nothing."

"They are sending us out there based on such a trivial thing?"

"I tried arguing that it may just be an unneccesary risk, but the councilors didn't listen. So." The tone of Shepard's voice changed dramatically, and she sounded almost cheerful. "I haven't had the pleasure of eating much asari food, and I'm going to take a shot in the dark and guess it's vice versa with you. I propose that you decide what I should eat, and I'm ordering your dinner tonight."

"Very well," Liara said, turning her attention back to the menu laying open in front of her. "Do you have any taste preferences?"

"I'm an omnivore," Shepard said, grinning. "The only thing you can't mess with is my bourbon." She held up the glass she had been taking sips from, swivelling it around slightly, two ice cubes clinking against each other.

"May I?"

Alba handed the glass over to Liara, and Liara accepted it with both hands and brought it to her lips. Taking a few small sips, she handed the glass back to Shepard while savouring the aftertaste, which was reminiscent of... Trees, and something else.

"It's good, isn't it? Got that old, oaky taste. Perfect bourbon." Shepard took a swig before she put the glass down.

"It is quite different from what I have previously had," Liara said: the taste still lingered in her mouth, and while she enjoyed it, she felt it might be too overwhelming for her. "Still, I prefer a sweeter, lighter taste."

Liara's confession ignited a spark in Shepard's eyes, and when the waitor appeared a few seconds later, she quickly listed an order for Liara with a confident smile. Liara herself felt unsure if Shepard would appreciate the cuisine she grew up with, but nonetheless, she calmly ordered a grilled flertau with thiery sauce for appetizer and a desim for the main course.

"What do you think of the Citadel?" Shepard asked once he was gone.

"It's not my kind of place," Liara said, hands folded and resting on the table. "I prefer solitude and calm: this place is filled with people rushing towards some indeterminable goal. There is too much stress for me to feel calm here."

"I like it here. Reminds me of where I grew up. It was back on Earth, in a problematic megacity, like they all are, but it had its moments."

The waitor quietly placed a glass, filled with a light pink beverage in it, in front of Liara.

"Since you were a native of New York, the Citadel must be a familiar setting for you then," Liara said, fingering the delicate neck of the cool glass.

Shepard smiled, bringing her glass back to her lips. "I never said I was from New York, did I?" she said before tilting the glass back.

Liara froze, but seeing as how Shepard did not seem to be particularly upset at the slip of her tongue, she felt no need to avoid the subject anymore. "I admit, I have grown... Curious about you. Who you are. What you made you into the person before me."

"I can't help but wonder if it's me you want to get to know, or the Prothean visions in me."

"The Protheans were part of what first piqued my interest, yes," Liara confessed. It was the truth, and she felt it was better to not be deceptive. "But it has... Developed beyond that. When I joined minds with you, I saw some of your memories. It was unintentional, I assure you; they appeared as barriers that your subconscious threw up to keep me out. I wished to know more, so I looked you up."

"I don't bite, Liara. You could have asked me directly."

They fell silent as the waitor came with their appetitzers: Shepard eyed her dish hungrily, which calmed Liara enough to take a look at her own.

"That's a caramelized pear with calvados cheese and some gingerbread on the side," Shepard said, already cutting up the flertau and bringing it eagerly to her mouth. When she bit down, she closed her eyes and sighed happily.

Liara smiled. During her early years out on remote planets, the one thing she had craved the most and longed for, had been grilled flertau. She had never managed to grill them just exactly, or combine the necessary spices in right amounts, so she had quickly given up on her poor attempts at cooking and just eaten the tasteless food rations instead.

The crystallic surface of the pear cracked as she dug into it with her spoon, and she carefully balanced it, along with a bit of the cheese, up to her mouth. The taste was something familiar, and yet utterly foreign – she felt as if the pear was melting upon her tongue, and the cheese stung slightly, yet pleasantly. Swallowing, she smiled at Shepard.

"Delicious," she murmured.

"And you haven't even tried the rosé wine yet."

Liara drank a mouthful of the wine, its soft, fruity taste washing her mouth clean and cooling her down.

They ate quietly for a few minutes, Liara dragging out the enjoyment of each bite. She had longed for the taste of something organic, and what she was eating was beyond her expectations. However, as ate, she became painfully aware of the questions that she wished to ask, and eventually, she caved.

"I apologize in advance, Shepard," Liara started, "but I was wondering about what you did before you enlisted with the Systems Alliance."

Shepard put down her fork and knife on the platter. "You couldn't find anything on that?"

"The information was scarce, and with dubious sources."

"If you considered the sources shady, they were probably truthful sources."

She emptied her glass in one swift move, a slight crease appearing between her eyebrows as she swallowed it down. "I grew up on the streets of New York, a megacity back on Earth," she said, voice a bit hoarse from the drink. "I didn't have any parents to raise me, and and I don't remember much of my early years, except junkies pitying me and keeping me around in their drug dens."

"You were left all alone? Abandoned? But... What about your own government?"

Shepard shook her head. "It's easier to turn a blind eye to certain problems and hope that it goes away than to actually do something about it. So no, nobody came to help us, the children of the streets. And the ones that did wanted us to conform to their standards: believe in this religion, promise to join this and that group when you turn eighteen, dedicate yourself to an idiotic cause... Everyone had an agenda with us who starved. No matter how bad my hunger was, I didn't give up my future just because of a deafening famish."

Shepard held up a piece of the flertau between her fingers, turning it over slowly, thick juice trickling down her fingers. "I've been fed by the Alliance for eleven years, but I still expect to go hungry for days after each meal." Her tongue flicked out and caught the drops as they pooled at the creases of her wrist before she put the flertau in her mouth.

Liara looked down at the last bit of caramelized pear balancing on her spoon, and felt a peculiar sense of... Privilege. She had never worried about lack of food, or missing anything, for that matter. Matriarch Benezia had not exactly spoiled her with a lavish lifestyle, but Liara had rarely had some palpable object that was outside her range.

"I cannot begin to imagine..." Liara trailed off.

"Don't," Shepard said abruptly. "I don't begrudge you that you had a peaceful childhood. Everyone should have. Circumstances just dealt me a different hand, but I played it well. Don't feel guilty for the difference between us there, and don't pity me."

The waitor re-appeared, clearing away their plates and presenting them with the main courses: Shepard made an appreciative sound when she laid eyes on the desim, the meat grilled to perfection and with an assortment of vegetables from Thessia decorating it. Liara herself had never been particularly keen on it, but she knew asari commandos often praised desim meat for being the pinnacle of asari cuisine, holding it in high regard for its high protein count: a meal for a true warrior.

She herself had been gifted with a risotto, shaped neatly into a dome, with a wide variety of vegetables placed neatly around it, sauce evenly distrubted over them.

Liara still had her mind focused on what Shepard had been telling her, and she poked around in her food for a while before she looked up at the human.

"It must have been a very exposed situation," Liara said quietly, twirling the cutlery between her fingers.

"It was, and I struggled to not be helpless, but it wasn't all horrible. I got snapped up by a gang pretty early, and when they saw what I could do with computers and an omni-tool, they just let me hang around in their headquarters, organizing information. I was like a miniature Shadow Broker," Shepard said, smiling to herself.

"When it turned out I had biotic abilities, I became this prized little possession that the older kids fought about. They would drag me to business deals and pinch my neck until I got a mass effect field built up."

"You were able to perform biotic attacks at such a young age?"

"Not at all. It was a manipulative tactic I once suggested, and they decided to use it. The most I could do was get a weak barrier worked up, but even that was enough to intimidate any other gang trespassing on our territory. You have to understand that biotics had just been discovered, and with it came a lot of fear and prejudice. I just played on that and made my gang successful when they needed it. "

"Lieutenant Alenko told me of the struggles of early biotics. They – you – were accused of mind conrol and to some extent, telepathy. It sounds to me as if you were drawing too many quick conclusions by looking primarily towards the asari physiology, instead of actually evaluating it from what you had already. Biotics rarely add to the existing characteristics of a species; it merely grants the ability to manipulate mass effect fields, provided that the individual can excert enough control over their neural system."

Shepard shrugged. "We didn't know better. I guess the asari, resembling us the most, were what we identified with. Humanity was looking for a place."

"Sorry for interrupting. Please, you were telling me..."

"About my street life days, yeah. The group I was in was fairly calm. We stole and mugged and got into fights, yes, but not so that we became infamous anywhere outside the criminal world, and even them just left us on our own, because nobody cared about Tenth Street."

"Was that all you did during the days? Petty crimes?"

"You go on crime sprees during the night, Liara," Shepard scolded. "The darkness conceals what shouldn't be witnessed. During the days I slept and, well, studied."

"Studied?"

"Yes. I just felt this inexplicable urge to read and learn when I was a kid. Since I was this little prized possession, to be protected and kept out of harm's way as much as possible, I had a lot of time to do it in. So after I educated myself, I educated the others. Eventually, the older kids came around to the idea, and began teaching the younger ones, because having stupid children running around would really have wrecked us."

"I cannot help but think that you had something to do with creating such a structure," Liara said mildly.

"If you're illiterate on the street, you're not going to survive. It's as easy as that. For those who were interested in anything beyond the basics, there was the library a couple of blocks north. I went nearly every day, because I had little else to do. For a moment, reading a book while sitting on a hard chair, I wasn't the dirty little urchin who carried a knife in her boot."

Shepard became quiet, and she cut up her meat thoughtfully, eating with an almost ferocious appetite. Liara merely looked at the Commander, taking a bite of her own course now and then, but she was deep in thought.

There seemed to be some things that transcended species, age and environment; in this case, the love of reading. Liara had taken her childhood refuge in asari and turian literature, becoming engrossed by the stories and poetry while her mother had been distant. It was comforting to think that Shepard, despite living a dangerous, criminal life at the bottom of society in a megacity had done the same.

"Everything came to an end, though," Shepard said, eyes distant. "When I was around sixteen, the group imploded. I got out as fast I could."

"What happened?" Liara asked softly. Having been brought of her chain of thought, she worried she might have missed some scrap of emotion in Shepard's face, and that she would say the wrong words. She wanted to hear this out, draw her stories out and grow to understand them, rather than having to guess at what hid from her view.

"I hadn't really paid attention to the older ones fighting, but it got really bad – to the point where they were sleeping with one eye open. The air was rife with distrust, and one day, it all sparked. I can't explain exactly what happened, or why. I heard, later, from some other surviving members, that it was a fight over ideology."

"Criminal ideology?"

"What did I care? I was sixteen. I just wanted to eat and sleep. So I left the group and headed up to the richer areas of New York. It was rougher to live there, because you had to look as if you were somewhat normal – the cops patrolled the streets frequently, and there were watchful eyes everywhere. It was a boring year, and that's that. But I could have stayed on those streets for a while, if I hadn't done this really stupid thing when I was seventeen."

"I did not think you had stupidity within you," Liara said.

Shepard gave out a short laugh. "You should talk to my drill instructor. He'd tell you a thing or two that would make you re-think."

"What I did though, it was plain idiotic. I was so hungry one day that I didn't care who I tried to steal from, I just had to get some money. I trageted a careless girl, seeing a wad of cash peeking out of her coat pocket... When her father caught my hand as I was lifting the money off her. I ran, but one of his goons chased me through the streets until he caught me and dragged me back to his feet. His daughter – her name was Elise – she laughed at it all. A completely honest laugh of amusement, as if she didn't understand the severity of the situation. Then, she had the audacity to ask if I would be her friend. In front of her father. The infamous Dunstan Blake."

Seeing Liara's confusion, Shepard's eyes glittered darkly. "You don't know who he is, of course. But he was a major crime boss in New York at the time. When I looked up at his hard face, I was certain that I would die. However, Elise's actions made him look me over. Whatever he saw in my dirty little face, it saved me."

A residual image from Shepard's memory flashed through Liara's mind: a younger Shepard's gaunt little face, streaked with filth, lips parted as she looked herself in the mirror, examining a scar near her ear. Most of all, her eyes had seemed to glow with a hunger.

"He took me under his wing, made me his little... Assistant, handygirl, whatever. It was a really absurd, but I applied myself and was of use to him. His best little underling. As much as I knew it was a terrible position for me to be in – so much sensitive information, any night possibly the night when the law would crack down on us – I made the best out of it. With his funds, I got my biometric information changed, and I became a registered citizen. Alba Shepard."

"Alba. Quite a lovely name."

"I barely react to it. Dunstan found it so funny I picked Shepard as a last name that he'd just call me that, and eventually everyone did and it stuck around." She shrugged. "I like it that way."

Liara observed an almost imperceptible tug at the skin near the scar across Shepard's cheek. "You look sad speaking of Dunstan."

"I can't hate him for what he did to me. He was kind to me, but... It's an old romantic cliché in human culture: older man finds younger, poor girl and fixes her up. And the girl is supposed to re-pay her debt through falling in love with him and making him happy. I made him happy, I just didn't love him."

"You speak of him with such warmth, though," Liara said.

"Dunstan was beautiful, and attractive, but I never found myself deeply enarmoured with him. I think he fell head over heels for me though. Deep down, under all the brutality and cruelty, he was a bit of a romantic. A romantic trying to fix me."

"Did he?"

"You don't survive on the streets with a broken mind. I didn't need fixing, Liara. You heal yourself and keep your wits about you."

"I don't want to go into details about him, though," Shepard said as the waitor came around to collect their plates. Liara, too engrossed in listening to the story, had not eaten much, while Shepard had somehow scraped her plate clean between her talking.

"Anything else?" the waitor asked as he took Liara's plate, smiling at her.

"Tiramisu for both of us," Shepard said.

"And two glasses of veroi," Liara added. The waitor nodded and left them again.

"What I can tell you, however, is that he decided that when I turned eighteen, he'd have me put through the silly initiation rites those old-time gangs had and be promoted up the ranks. Way up. I would have been his right hand, ruling his crime circle with an iron fist."

"Did you not have any objections?"

"I couldn't have any. There was nothing else for me but the streets, and if I returned there, he would just drag me out again."

"A situation with no obvious escape."

"It didn't look like a bad future at the time."

"But you are here now, so I must assume that something changed."

"Yeah."

Shepard paused as the waitor came around: when he had placed the food and drinks on their table, she handed him a card that he quickly moved over a slick payment device kept in his black apron pocket. He gave the two of them a nod, wishing them an enjoyable dessert, before he swiftly made his way out into the main hall of the restaurant.

"A special tasks team cracked down on Dunstan one day," Shepard said between spoonfuls of the sweet tiramisu. "He got shot point-blank in front of me and his daughter as we were preparing me for the initiation. I think that was the first time she understood what kind of man he was. She kept crying on my shoulder as we got rounded up and taken for processing, crying harder and harder as she had to listen to the police questioning me about what I had been through. What a naïve girl she was. He'd protected her so well that she wouldn't have a chance in the world without him."

"How horrible," Liara pressed out, feeling slightly overwhelmed at what Shepard was telling her in such a calm, collected manner.

"I didn't cry until they sent me for a medical examination," Shepard confessed. "For some reason, as they were scanning my body, and I stood there, naked, not knowing what would come next, I couldn't hold it back. I unconsciously got a mass effect field worked up and accidentally made all the equipment in the room start floating, scaring the staff half to death. One doctor, who had worked with the Alliance, understood what kind of an uncertain future that awaited me in New York, and told me about enlisting. The rest, I'm sure, you can figure out yourself."

"What happened to Elise?" Liara queried.

"Better not ask me. I don't have the answers, anyway. When I left, I gave up all of that. And honestly, Liara, while I hope she found something or someone to help her, the reality is most likely... Different."

Shepard put the spoon down, and raised her glass towards Liara. They clinked them together and drank it all in a single take, the chilled alcohol burning a trail through Liara.

They left the restaurant quietly, walking close to each other without actually touching: Liara felt a lightheaded feeling settling in over her, and she followed Shepard without question as the Commander ducked in and out of the crowd, guiding Liara somewhere.

Suddenly, they came to a stop outside an anonymous building facade, stylish white panels floating into opaque glass windows. "I'm renting an apartment here," Shepard explained as she swiped a keycard to a door console, the door opening and letting them into an elevator.

"How clever of you," Liara murmured as she leaned back against the elevator's wall.

The lopsided grin re-appeared. "You don't go out drinking often, do you?"

The amused tone in her voice made Liara mirror Shepard's typical grin, and she moved carefully after Shepard out of the elevator and into a barely furnished apartment, the walls still shining white, no dust gathered in the corners of the hall. There were a few brown boxes standing against one wall, but otherwise, it was a pre-furnished apartment with little personality to it.

Yet Liara thought it was just right for Shepard.

"There's a guest room in there," Shepard said, pointing towards a door nearby as she kicked off her black boots. "Make yourself at home."

"Thank you, Shepard." Liara slid out of her light flat shoes as she moved towards the appointed room, one hand trailing along the wall. When she had stepped over the threshold, she heard her name spoken.

"Liara?"

The soft voice was right behind Liara, and she turned around, coming face to face with Shepard who reached out her hand, placing it gently against Liara's jaw, finger stroking against her cheek. Slowly, Shepard moved her hand, letting her fingertips lazily trace their way across Liara's face until they came to her lips; Shepard's thumb pressed against the lower lip, and Liara felt her breath flutter, her emotions swirling wildly.

Liara wanted to ask her not to stop, but she could not manage to form any words.

Shepard's soft, clear voice made her open her eyes. "I hope you understand what I'm trying to convey to you, Liara. And thank you for a pleasant dinner."

"Any time."

Shepard nodded, her eyes downcast, and she removed her hand from Liara's face before she closed the door to the guest room.


	8. The Scent of Memories Coming Back

**Chapter VIII: The Scent of Memories Coming Back**

* * *

Liara had woken up to an empty apartment: Shepard had tacked a note to the guest room door that she had gone out, but left an access card for Liara to use as she wished. At the bottom, she had started writing something, but covered it up and instead signed with her number _– 'in case you need me'._

For a minute, Liara had tried to make out what had been written originally, but she gave up when she felt a tension behind her eyes, a reminder of all the alcohol she'd imbued the previous night. Folding the note, she put it in the pocket of her jacket before she left the apartment. It felt awkward loitering in Shepard's personal space without the Commander actually being there.

Emerging out on the street, she froze. She had never been to the Citadel previously, and she had been slightly inattentive the night before when Shepard had guided her through the streets, but to be in the Wards, on a vibrant street teeming with life, was something she could never have imagined.

Around her, people were rushing past, and rapid transit shuttles flew overhead, creating a background buzz. A strange tune was trickling out from a nearby café, mingling with the voices of two asaris arguing some topic with a salarian. Two human men passed her by, one of them giving out a low whistle before being elbowed in the side by his companion.

The stimulation on her senses was almost unbearable: there were sweet and bitter scents that she had never experienced before, and sounds that were completely foreign to her. Standing on the curb of the street, she felt a desperate need to escape somewhere quieter.

Across the street, she saw two dormant rapid transit shuttles, and hurrying over, she slid into one of the pods. The Wards were not her kind of place, but she had heard good things about the Presidium, and flipped through the various stations available there. She chose the Thessian botanical gardens as destination from the onboard navigational interface, and leaned back as the auto-pilot made the shuttle rise almost noiselessly and move up from the Wards.

Lights streamed past in a flurry, and she watched the sprawl of the ward arms for the few minutes it took before she reached the garden, the shuttle landing quietly, and Liara stiffly moved out of it, still feeling that her muscles were fatigued and unreliable.

The Thessian gardens, however, were like coming home. The scent of blossoming trees hung heavy in the air, and she felt vicious pangs of nostalgia: of Benezia's garden in the valley outside of Serrice, and of the secluded spot within it that Liara had staked out as hers.

With utmost discretion, she snapped off a small branch and settled down on a bench a bit further away, holding the flowers just under her nose as she inhaled their thick scent, her eyes closed as memories began to stir.

When Liara had been in her early fifties, Benezia had received numerous nervun trees as a gift from some politician or benefactor, interested in getting on her good side. The matriarch had them planted in Liara's grove, and as they quickly took the sunny little corner of the wild garden, their blossoms had erupted in a grand display of white and yellow. The petals constantly swirled down onto Liara's brow as she lay sprawled on the pillows she dragged out with her when she went there to study.

Once, as she had put the small computer screen away and just dazed in the shade of the trees, letting the blossoms cover her as they floated down onto her, she had heard Benezia's voice. There had been a difference in her normally determined voice, though: it had held a note of something that Liara had difficulty pinpointing, as she lay completely still, pretending to be asleep under her cover of blossoms.

Her peace in the present, however, was interrupted by a shadow that passed, and the feel of a presence settling next to her. Irritated, Liara opened her eyes, and found herself faced with a human female; she appeared to be older than Alba,with creases surrounding her eyes and a rather conservative red dress that covered nearly her entire body.

"A wonderful morning, isn't it?" the woman said smoothly, running a hand over her tight hair-bun that kept her grey hair out of her tanned face.

"Seeing as how the artificial sunlight is continuously on up here on the Presidium, it makes very little difference," Liara replied.

She wished to bat away the intruder, to have her moment of loneliness and nostalgia; she was in no mood to deal with a talkative stranger. The woman seemed to miss the cold stare Liara was trying to convey, however, and remained on the bench, hands clasped gently over one knee. With an inward sigh, Liara gave up. "Is there something I can help you with?" she asked tiredly.

"A bird whispered in my ear that you could," the woman said, scooting closer to Liara on the bench. "You are Liara T'Soni."

An uneasy feeling began spreading through Liara as she stiffened at hearing her name uttered from the lips of the complete stranger.

"And?" There was something incredibly unnerving about the elegant woman. Particularly her smooth voice.

"Daughter of matriarch Benezia T'Soni, Prothean archaeologist with some rather controversial theories, and part of the Normandy crew, under the command of Alba Shepard." Shepard's full name lingered on her lips.

Liara felt a cold chill run through her. "How did you..."

The woman held out a sleek voice communications device to Liara.

"How I know does not matter. What I want from you, is that you contact Alba Shepard and kindly ask her to come around. I have things to discuss with her. It would be advisable that you do as I say, because I would hate to see an accident happen to you." The woman leaned closer, her voice reduced to a light whisper. "Stray bullets are so tricky to trace these days, you know?"

Recalling the number Shepard had left her, Liara punched it in and put the black device against her ear, glancing hesitantly at the woman. Barely a second passed before she heard Shepard's suspicious voice on the other end.

"Commander?"

"Liara," Shepard said on the other end. "I didn't recognize the number."

"Could you please come to the Thessian plaza at the Presidium gardens?"

"Is something wrong?"

Liara glanced at the woman. "Nothing at all."

"You're a poor liar. I'm on my way." The connection was cut, and Liara folded the device before handing it back.

As the woman took it, she snapped it in half with seemingly no force at all, throwing the remains into a nearby trash canister that incinerated the pieces in the blink of an eye. "Your help was appreciated," she said, reclining her position slightly as she looked towards the entrance of the gardens.

The artificial sunlight was beginning to grind on Liara's nerves, and the presence of such a distressing woman next to her only worsened it. The slight upwards tilt of the woman's lips, and her mirthful eyes, as if it was all an elaborate game, disturbed Liara the most. She felt beyond vulnerable near her: a complete stranger who knew all too much about her own private affairs, and who had her completely pinned down and at her mercy. How vicious information was when turned against oneself.

Liara felt almost disgusted at being so weak and exposed, and as the minutes stretched on, she agonized at the ease with which the woman waited, keeping her enigmatic silence. As for herself, Liara was unwilling to breach it, too concerned about the idea that a sniper could have her in their sights for her to think of anything to talk about. Not that she particularly wanted to talk to the woman, anyway.

After a few more minutes had passed, Liara saw a single shuttle descending, and when two tall humans exited, she felt her stomach turn slightly – out of hope or fear, she could not tell.

Shepard picked up her pace to a light jog when she noticed Liara, and Alenko followed her obediently. As they came closer, Shepard's face cracked up into her typical grin, and she tucked a loose hair strand behind her ear, her lips parting, a smart quip on her lips – that was silenced when she saw the human woman.

Shepard's grin suddenly turned menacing – no longer radiating the warmth that Liara associated with it, it bared her teeth and her eyes narrowed. "Helena," Shepard said coldly, folding her arms in a slow, calm manner.

"Look at you, Alba, you're all grown up!" Helena exclaimed, smiling slightly. "I heard you enlisted, but I never believed it. Not until... Now. Your name has come up in certain circles."

"I could have you arrested." Shepard made no attempt to hide her hostility.

"For what?" Helena laughed. "Words do not break laws, at least not mine. You have nothing on me, my trigger-happy little Spectre there. Besides, I have excellent legal protection."

Shepard clenched her jaw for a moment, mulling the words over, before she reached out to Liara and brusquely took a hold of her arm, pulling her off the bench. The strong pinch of Shepard's fingers bruised Liara's arm, but Liara did not complain as the Spectre moved to stand in front of her, shielding her from Helena.

"Cute asari," Helena said, her lips curled. "The Spectres comes with more benefits than I would have imagined." Her eyes narrowed for a moment as she scrutinized Shepard's face. "Serving the military has given you some rather disfiguring scar tissue, though. Have you not considered cosmetic surgery?"

"I earned my scars," Shepard said through gritted teeth.

"Earned them through selfish sacrifice on Torfan?" Helena wagged a finger. "Don't think I didn't hear."

"You're judging me? That's rich, considering all the dirty deeds that stain your manicured hands."

"Ever so accusatory." Helena shook her head. "Are you sure you wish to have this discussion in front of your... Well, what are they? Companions? Partners? _Accomplices?_"

"Alenko, T'Soni!" Shepard barked out their names the way she did commands on the battlefield. The military Commander within was always with her, Liara realized, straightening her back – always ready to seize control of any situation, constantly alert in the face of a hostile entity.

Kaidan snapped to attention at Liara's side, his hand reflexively reaching up to his brow in a stiff gesture. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Take a little stroll," the Commander said. "Stay in sight. I'll be done here soon." Shepard gave them a short nod before she settled down on the bench: Helena's lips parted in a smile, her attention completely focused on Shepard.

Alenko began walking away slowly, visibly maintaining a slow pace as he tried to keep an eye on Helena and Shepard. Liara fell into step with him, but her eyes flickered in attention from Shepard's cocky posture to Kaidan's tense face.

She wished she could figure out just what, exactly, Kaidan was thinking. While she understood that her desire to peer into his head was a misguided wish, she still would rather know than to ask him outright. His face revealed nothing to her, though: his mask hadn't slipped once since the morning on Feros when she had seen his utter devotion to Shepard flicker across his face. In return, he had gotten to see her poorly-concealed interest in the Commander, as well.

"You're staring at me pretty hard there, Liara," Kaidan said, his eyes meeting hers briefly. "I don't have a geth growing out of my neck, do I?"

"No synthetics upon your person, no," Liara replied quickly.

"It's supposed to be a joke."

Liara uttered a small '_oh_'; she still had troubles identifying most human jokes, especially when they were delivered with a serious face. Deadpanning, she believed Joker had called it, when he had tried to explain it to her. Shrugging her shoulders, she decided to try again to be on more friendly terms with Kaidan: like they had been, before he had walked into the medbay when Liara's hand had rested on Shepard's soft cheek. Before there had been a tension that could not be easily resolved.

"Lieutenant Alenko," Liara said, measuring each word she was about to say carefully. "How are your implants faring?"

"No major flares to report," Kaidan said with a shrug. "A bit of combat now and then relieves any tension."

"Just what Chief Williams says," Liara murmured.

"She was the one who suggested it in the first place. I didn't really trust too much in those words – she is a soldier through and through, and she likes combat – but it's effective."

"I must admit that the concept of pain tied to biotic abilities is rather foreign to me."

"The asari are lucky, then. But it's a small price, in the grander scheme of things. Humans believe that nothing comes for free: basically, the pain is what L2s pay for being such strong biotics."

"Do you think it is worth it?"

"What are you getting at?" Kaidan asked, slowing his step even more.

"If you could, would you chose to not be a biotic?"

"But there is no choice, doctor T'Soni," Kaidan said thoughtfully. "It is part of me, and it's not something that you can take away. There are some circumstances we can control here in life, and some that we will have to bend ourselves to. You flow with what happens, because some things are set in stone."

"An interesting viewpoint." Liara trailed off and stopped, leaning against a solid stained-glass panel, a common feature in Thessian gardens. Kaidan stood at an arm's length away from her. As neither seemed interested in carrying on the conversation further, both of them chose to instead observe the bench, where their Commander sat next to the older woman.

Watching the two human females arguing in hushed voices – there was no question that they were discussing something rather heatedly – it all reminded Liara of the day in her grove.

Benezia and the other asari, the one so keen in pursuing the matriarch, had stood close to each other – and Benezia had kept a rigid posture while the other, light-blue asari, had leaned close, a nervun blossom behind her ear, a mischievous smile on her lips. She had been trying to appeal to the matriarch, her fingers playing across Benezia's chin.

Liara had grown increasingly drowsy as she had watched the two asari, and her eyes, grown heavy-lidded from the heady scent of the blossoms, were not able to watch all that passed. She could see a one-sided intimacy that Benezia did not reciprocate, and eventually, a dejected admittance of defeat in the other's body language. Their talk seemed to enter a more political area at that point, and Liara had allowed herself to doze off momentarily then, unable to stave off the sleepiness in her.

While the same level of intimacy was obviously gone from Helena's affections, she did often reach a hand out towards Shepard's face to cup Shepard's chin or cheek – and Shepard responded the same way each time, through forcefully removing the offending hand.

It was unbearable to watch, and Liara actually felt a small sliver of joy when Kaidan chose to distract her.

"I heard you spent the night at Shepard's apartment," Kaidan said, half a question, half a statement.

"I did," Liara replied.

"Then we know, don't we?"

"Know what?"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Where her interests lie."

The subtle movement around what he was hinting at finally became clear. "I'm sorry," Liara said, looking straight at Kaidan.

Kaidan shook his head. "Don't be. She was clear about it from the beginning, always maintaining a professional relationship between us. All I had was some hope that maybe..." He paused to sigh. "From the moment I saw you two together, I just knew. There was a look in her eyes that had never been there when she was with me. You were different to her."

Liara felt a strange flutter inside of her that she struggled to overcome: her nerves tingled, despite the light headache and stiff limbs. "I... I had no idea. I thought... I do not know what I thought, to be honest, but when you did not talk to me, I was unsure of what to do."

"I had to be alone for a while," he confessed. "Come to terms with what I couldn't interfere with."

"And follow the new direction of the flow," she added, his earlier comments still fresh in mind.

"I needed some time," Kaidan said. "I'm not angry, if that's what you thought, but it's never easy. It was difficult to even think about talking to you for a while, but it passed, eventually."

"I find this a strange conversation to be having," Liara admitted.

Kaidan chuckled. "These kind of things are never easy, but we've done pretty good for ourselves, I'd say." He moved his head to look towards the bench, and cleared his throat. "Looks like they have finished their talk, too."

Shepard was sitting alone on the bench, resting her elbows on her knees, her fingers pressing against her forehead.

She looked like Benezia had after the other asari had left. Liara had felt a chill sweep through her body as her mother, still thinking her daughter was asleep, had leaned against the trunk of a tree, fingers digging into the bark as her back heaved.

Liara had felt her heart swell, back then. She had missed the vulnerable mother she had once had in her younger years: a Benezia not involved in politics, not wearing a thick armor to protect herself in the heated world of vicious debates – she had simply been open; approachable and kind. Liara had wanted to shrug off her flower cover and run up to her mother, embracing her tightly... But she had not. A peculiar fear had paralyzed her, and she had only been able to watch as Benezia had eventually stilled her wild breathing, smoothed out her dress and left the grove without a glance at her daughter.

That feeling of paralysis returned when she looked upon Shepard. To see her – the iron Commander, the vicious warrior – shaken by a simple conversation was a distressing sight.

Shepard was not as obviously disturbed, but there were some subtle signs that Liara could interpret. The way she cradled her forehead, as if she was struggling with one of the headaches she had told Liara about – and the way in which her jaw tensed and relaxed with each breath she took.

Liara lingered a step behind Alenko, unsure what she could offer.

"Is everything fine, Commander?" Kaidan asked.

"I need to blow off some steam," Shepard replied, not looking up at them.

"Well, there's always Flux."

She let out a soft groan as she rose. "Flux will do fine," she said. "Let's go."

They all piled into a transit shuttle, Kaidan taking the front seat while Shepard gave Liara a tug to sit in the back with her. Barely had she settled into the seat before the shuttle jerked into motion, and Liara slumped back into her seat.

Shepard seemed distracted, Liara noted: the Commander gazed out of the window, seemingly lost to everything else.

Wishing to find some way back into Shepard's proximity, Liara's hand came to rest on Shepard's naked lower arm, and the skin-to-skin contact nearly made Liara shiver. It did make the human react, and her other hand sneaked up to where Liara's rested, intertwining their fingers and pressing the palms together.

"Shepard?" Liara breathed out, a whisper against an ear.

"Everything will be fine, soon," Shepard said in a hushed voice, her eyes distant for a second before she grinned, running her forefinger softly over Liara's knuckles.


	9. The Beat of Another Drawing Closer

**Chapter IX: The Beat of Another Drawing Closer**

* * *

There was a constant hum in the air: muffled noises were heard in the distance, and Liara squeezed her eyes shut tighter, burrowing into the softness underneath her head. Above, she heard a laugh, and felt a shift in the weight of her resting place. She wanted to be left alone – she was tired and comfortable – but whoever had laughed apparently had other ideas in mind.

Liara felt a finger poking at her face, and she tried to swat it away. Instead, it clamped down on her nose, and she opened her eyes, glaring at Joker. He was grinning down at her, and gave her a flick across her nosetip before leaning back with a glass of a clear drink.

"I was resting," Liara said, stifling a yawn with the back of her hand as she sat up on the plush couch. The softness of it was dangerously inviting; she'd reclined just a bit, closed her eyes just a bit longer, breathing just a bit more shallowly...

"You did sleep for two hours there, blue," Joker replied, scratching the facial hair that was growing in patches on his chin.

"Two hours? That..."

"I swear to the Fifth Fleet, you slept that long."

Liara stretched her arms out in front of her and held the position for a few seconds, before letting the hands drop into her lap again, letting out a long yawn as she thought of the evening that had passed.

Immediately upon arriving at Flux with Shepard and Kaidan, the human bouncer had showed them to a seperate room – with compliments from the owner. Through that peculiar magnetic pull Shepard exerted on her own crew, slowly familiar faces had emerged through the mass of people and peeked into the private room, bringing with them bursts of deafening music and new cocktail mixes. The glasses had gathered up on the table, the couches crowding and thinning by the turn of the hour.

Joker had appeared and immediately settled down next to her, drink in one hand and snacks in the other, small crumbs getting stuck in his beard as he chatted away with anyone who came in. Looking back, she pinpointed that it had been sometime during his conversation with Kaidan that she had leaned her head back, that she had started slipping into sleeping. Their conversation had been muffled, she'd only been able to hear scraps of what Joker said, and too tired to engage with them, she'd closed her eyes and just felt the musical beat reverberate in her.

Stretching and yawning once more, she realized that the private room had grown quite empty while she had slept.

"Where is everyone?" Liara asked Joker, looking around herself.

The private room, filled with couches and chairs that surrounded a few smaller oval tables, was relatively deserted: a couple of engineers were half-asleep in one corner, tiny clear glasses gathered on the table with yellow fruit peels and salt scattered all over. Tali and Garrus were engaged in a turian game of strategy, the board set up between them and from a quick glance, Liara saw that Tali had the upper hand. The cheek flaps of the turian flared slightly, in time with his breathing: he was clearly a bit flustered over the situation.

"Most left," Joker said at her side, flicking an olive up in the air before catching it in his mouth. "The Commander was up here for a while, but she can only stay away from the dancefloor for that long."

"And you stayed here with me."

"Well, it was a bit hard to leave, with you being so romantic as to drool all over my chest while you slept. Can't say I've had that pleasure in a while."

"Did I move too much? I didn't hurt you, did I?" Liara asked, a bit concerned.

"Don't worry about me," Joker replied. "Though you could do the right thing to this starving man, who is really sick of these crappy tasteless olives, and buy him something to eat."

Liara felt her stomach twist itself, small pangs of hunger going off. "Gladly."

She moved out of the couch, carefully circumnavigating the sleeping bodies and stretched-out legs, keeping an eye on Joker as he expertly moved past all obstacled with his crutches, and she pushed the light glass door open as they passed out into the noisy club.

Joker pointed at the thronging mass of people, and shouted something at her. She couldn't make it out, but looked at where he was pointing.

Alba was on the dancefloor, her blonde hair standing out amongst the blues and purples of other asari, her body moving with the music. She stood out, because she wasn't dancing smoothly like the other patrons, but seemed to be swallowed up by the music, dancing to her content, her hair flying everywhere. It seemed like her feet were barely touching the ground.

Next to her, Chief Williams was swinging her hips, her hands moving out towards Kaidan and pulling his awkward body closer. He seemed reluctant to be on the floor, but Ashley, her determination showing, was trying get him into the rhythm of the music, the repetitive beat that had the entire dancefloor entranced.

Ashley's hands were at Kaidan's neck, resting easily on his square shoulders while she moved her face closer to his. Liara could see Kaidan shift under her attentions, but he did not push her away – he seemed to struggle against his own wishes, perhaps, but they disappeared from view, into a darker corner out of view.

A bit further away, Wrex stood leaned against a wall, keeping his arms crossed and an eye on the frenzied body of the Commander. All the patrons kept up an arm's distance from him, but he seemed content with it, that strange krogan smile present on his face.

Liara looked back to Alba, and saw that her shirt had gotten torn in her wild dance, and it was hanging in slashed pieces on her torso. With a fluid movement, Alba had removed the shreds, dancing now with a near-naked torso, a band of cloth wrapped over her breasts.

Joker grinned and gave Liara a nudge out the door and down into the marketplace – a bit calmer than during the day, but not by much. Where some stalls had closed down business for the night, others had sprung up, selling cooked food from all over the galaxy. A burly krogan thrust a stick of near-charred meat into her face; as she breathed in the smell of it she recognized it as varren meat, making her swallow back a retch. She'd eaten it once, during a dig where the krogan guard they'd hired was the only one who could cook somewhat decently. Unfortuneately, he was unable to tell rancid meat from unspoilt one, and she'd spent a night feeling as if she was dying from stomach pains.

She hurried to catch up with Joker, who was already eyeing up the menu at a stall. "We're not having krogan cooking," he said as she came to his side. "No offense, but I've been dying for a proper hamburger since I boarded the Normandy." He nodded at the stall owner. "These burgers made of proper meat?"

"Define proper," the owner said, sniffing.

"Okay. Vat-grown or not."

"Do you know how expensive free-range cow meat is these days?"

Joker sighed, then began moving away from the stall. The proprietor leaned over his counter and yelled after Joker, who returned with a skeptical look, and they discussed something at the counter, voices low and heads close together. After a while, Joker seemed pleased enough and the sound of fat sizzling on the hot stove-top made him turn towards Liara.

"Well-done," she remarked.

"Oh, that? No big deal."

"The source of the meat does seem of particular interest to you."

"Well, yeah, but a burger has to be proper. I know it's expensive to import that kind of meat to the Citadel, but there's some who do. And then you just have to pester them to give it up to a simple little Alliance pilot." He cleared his throat. "I convinced him to drop the price a bit too. For your convenience."

The chef yelled at Joker over the sizzle of frying meat, asking him what toppings they wanted. He began listing it in perfect detail, down to the exact amount of ingredients, much to the chef's annoyance. When they finished, Joker took their meal – carried in a white paper bag that was greasing at the bottom – and settled down on a bench just on the edge of the market.

Liara sat down next to him as he handed her the burger, wrapped in thin paper, after which he set about arranging the long and golden salt-sprinkled side-dish he'd ordered at the bottom of the paper bag, pouring them out and folding down the sides to make them easier to reach.

"Fries and burgers and a nice view, all I need," Joker said, reclining as he took a first bite, face scrunching up.

"Something wrong with the meat?"

"No, the bastard forgot my horesradish."

Liara smiled and took a bite of her own hamburger: the mix of all the layers, as well as the almost-spicy sauce, was a heady meal. There was a lot of taste in her mouth, all dull on their own but together creating something she almost quite liked.

"You looked like you needed to get out of there," Joker commented, already half-way through his hamburger. Amazingly enough for him, none of it had ended up on his chin. "The club, I mean."

"Shepard took us there, I just followed." She sampled one of the fries, the crisp exterior giving way to a softer, almost tasteless, interior. The salt stung in her mouth.

"She has that effect on people. Is it in the ass? I mean, you get to see a lot of it, I reckon. Hanging around after her as she shoots someone else..." Joker finished off his hamburger in one quick gulp. "Do you ever feel like putting your foot down?"

"What do you mean?"

"Just, stand the fuck up to Shepard. Maybe she doesn't look like it right now, but she's got a reputation, and it's for a reason."

"Reputations are fleeting and often brought forth by some inner feeling from the party forming them, reflecting a desire or jealousy."

"I first met Shepard on Arcturus. She was working some nerves out, partying, working everyone into a frenzy and practically ripped the station apart. It was a mess. I saw her get into a brawl with some other marines over some petty matter – they're always petty when there's nerves involved – and she flung him around like a toy with her biotics. The next day, she shipped off, entire station breathed a sigh of relief, and Torfan happened."

"What are you implying?"

"The Commander is feisty, what else?" Joker shrugged. "Just thought I'd give you a heads-up. I'm feeling that something big is waiting for us if she's up there at Flux tearing the floor up. And I'm the eyes and ears of the Normandy. You're getting involved with something too."

Liara wrapped the remains of her hamburger into the paper still in her lap and threw it into the incinerator waste bucket nearby. "I appreciate the sentiment," Liara said, even though what Joker said had stirred a motion within her.

She excused herself and left Joker to munch on the remaining fries on his own, and she walked back up towards Flux. Despite having decided on heading back to the Normandy for the night, she just wanted one more look. One more peek at Shepard before the night was to end.

Down on the floor, Shepard was still dancing furiously. For a moment, Liara thought she still had a piece of her shirt on her back, but she realized that it was similar to the bodily ornaments she had seen some of the soldiers aboard the Normandy comparing with each other. A great tattoo, sprawled across Shepard's back, dark and detailed. While she was too far away for Liara to see exactly what it was, it took up the majority of her back, going all the way from the neck, down across her spine and blossoming outwards across the sides and continuing down on the skin concealed by the trousers she wore.

Shepard turned, and her face lit up when she saw Liara. She stopped dancing, and began pushing through the crowd.

Liara understood then, looking at Shepard's determined body slipping between sharp shoulders and dodging glasses filled with drinks, that she wanted Shepard to be close. That she wanted Shepard. There was no way around it.

She had gracefully moved away from any such thoughts, feeling that they would complicate the mission she had been swept up in. The Normandy was trying to stop a disaster in the making, and there she was, selfishly wishing to hide Shepard away with her from the galaxy – wishing to kiss Shepard so senseless so they could both forget what they were racing headlessly towards.

But what did Shepard think?

Liara was uncertain how Shepard felt about it all. If her little touches, her attention, if it meant something deeper, or if it was just an attempt at friendship. Despite what Kaidan had said, she could not be sure: each and every single individual built their relationships in different, complicated patterns. Just because the person treated one person in one specific way, did not mean that was the way all relationships were treated. Perhaps there was something in Liara that just struck a certain interest in Shepard – it did not have to mean that there was a romantic interest.

Relationships between asari and humans were still rare, too. What if Shepard was... Frightened? What if she found Liara's skin, Liara's head and her asari ways to be too strange, too complicated for her to become involved with?

There was so much that Liara did not know, shaded parts of the equation that were outside her grasp. How could she make an informed decision if she did not know of all the variables that were to interact with each other?

She had to make a decision, she realized suddenly. All her cautious thought, all her careful approach and knowledge, what did it amount to when she was trying to find out what Shepard felt? She would have to thrust herself, blindly, into an unknown territory, and seek out the answers.

Shepard appeared in front of her, chest still heaving from her dancing, sweat trickling down the naked stomach.

Liara would test it all, then. If she failed, then she would accept her defeat and humiliation.

The beat of her heart resounded in rhythm with the music as she approached Shepard. Every detail intensified to the point of completely overwhelming Liara's nerves, but she pushed it all aside, putting her complete focus upon Shepard.

Acting upon pure instinct, Liara cupped Shepard's head in her hands, her fingertips tangling into the small, fickle hair strands by the ears. She closed her eyes and kissed Shepard, full on the lips: tasting salty sweat, and underneath, the warm, familiar taste of burbon.

As Liara withdrew and took one step back, she steeled herself in preparation of being pushed away and rejected. Of having her emotions brushed away, of being unlucky and shy and hopelessly locked within herself...

And instead of brusquely pushing her away, Shepard opened her eyes slowly, raising one hand to run her fingers along Liara's cheek before putting her hand at the back of Liara's neck.

"Finally," Shepard breathed, licking her lips. "I've been waiting."

And she pulled Liara closer, a wicked little smile flickering by before her lips descended upon Liara's with a crushing force, sweeping away all trace of doubt and fear in Liara's mind.


	10. A Wrinkle in Their Space Time Continuum

**Chapter X: A Wrinkle in Their Space-Time Continuum**

* * *

A bright light was the first thing Liara saw when she peeled her eyes apart: a neon sign running the news headlines in the distance, and the occasional hum of a passing rapid transit vehicle. The beat of the Wards continued onwards, seemingly regardless of what happened. Stretching out in the wide bed, she felt the sheets shift over her body, her skin tender from...

Flickering memories of the night passed through her head: glimpses of Shepard's eyelashes, Liara's finger running along the cheek scar, those pale pink lips becoming swollen. That blonde hair, spilling down over their faces, tickling Liara's nose...

She remembered the previous night: fumbling home to Shepard's apartment, with Shepard pressing Liara up against every wall they came across, kissing her feverishly until they were both out of breath. Once in the apartment itself, Shepard had pulled Liara into her bedroom and they had fallen onto the bed together, a mess of intertwined limbs as Shepard's lips traced their way across Liara's skin.

She drew in a deep breath, and her nostrils filled with Shepard's scent. A smile spread across her lips, a laugh escaping from her throat. There was such an intense feeling of exhaustion that permeated her body, but still, the feeling that she had crossed an irrevisible boundary and succeeded in her daring attempt – the elated feeling could not be described in simple words.

There was a rustle from the kitchen, and Shepard appeared in the door opening a few moments later, looking like she had barely recovered from the evening at Flux. Her tousled hair was tucked back behind her ears, and she wore a simple, armless shirt that covered her torso.

They looked at each other in silence for a few moments, and the impact of what she had done weighed down on Liara.

What they had done, that final invisible barrier that they had crossed, it had changed a great many things. They could not return to what had been before, not to that exact friendship they had maintained. They could move onwards, or shy back, fearful of what had transpired, wishing to undo, longing to forget...

Did Shepard regret it in any way?

"I made you coffee," Shepard said after a while, breaking the tension. She stepped into the bedroom and reached over the bed, handing Liara the cup before pulling up a chair and sitting down, her feet put up on the edge of the bed.

"Thank you." Liara held the cup in her hands, breathing in the scent deeply. She had grown to like the hot beverage quite a lot since lieutenant Alenko had first introduced it to her, even going so far as to research it: _a drink originating from the human homeworld, abolished during the worst part of the environmental crisis that ravaged the planet – _around the time she had been born –,_ later brought back and nowadays mainly grown in the colonies._ The weather on the homeworld was apparently too volatile.

"Long night." Shepard was grinning, giving Liara the nagging feeling that there was something implied in those words. "I'm... Usually not particularly talkative on mornings like these, Liara. But last night, what we did..." Her voice grew hoarse, and she took a sip from her cup, swallowing hard and coughing slightly afterwards. "I've been waiting for you to come around to me," Shepard said, her expression lingering on the border of seriousness and amusement. "You took your sweet time."

"From the moment I saw you, I was drawn to you," Liara said, smiling gently. "You have an air about you, something which I cannot explain, but it is there nonetheless." She tilted her head, scrutinizing the Commander closely. There were aspects that she was uncertain of, though: like how there could be an attraction between them – what did they have in common? They were different – not necessarily polar opposites, but different enough to make her wonder what it was that Alba saw within her. Maybe it was the difference itself which attracted them?

"Wandering thoughts, Liara?"

"Always."

No, their difference in itself wasn't what attracted. There was so much more, countless years of more, Liara realized – she could spend her years trying to solve it and she would still be no closer to a proper answer. And yet...

"Shepard? I think this change, between us... I think I like it." Liara sat up straighter in the bed, crossing her legs, her fingers moving along the rim of the coffee cup. "And it is different from anything I have ever experienced."

Shepard smiled. "That's what this is like. A storm that sweeps you up, and you have to relenquish your own control and let _it_ control _you_. Let go and dive straight on in." She finished her cup with a quick swig, face contorting at the bitter last splash. Her eyes darted to the pile of clothes that belonged to Liara that laid on the floor. "Well, I should pack, then, and let you get dressed."

Shepard got up and took the empty mug with her out into the kitchen, leaving Liara to get dressed on her own.

Throwing the sheets to the side, Liara put her feet down on the floor and suddenly felt just how taxed her body was. She stretched out her stiff legs in front of her, feeling the muscles tense to then relax, and she continued until she felt all lingering tensions from the previous night disappear from her limbs. Then, she began picking up her clothes from the floor, one piece of garment at a time, dressing herself in front of the mirror.

The last time she had looked at herself with such close scrutiny in a mirror had been before the evening she had dined with Shepard. What had she worried about that night? She couldn't exactly remember, except that she had wondered about what awaited her in the restaurant.

There was a different kind of worry contained within her now, one equally hard to vocalize as before.

Liara studied her half-naked body, twisting slightly in front of the full-length mirror. There was nothing different about her looks – she hadn't gained any scar tissue, hadn't grown some of that strange human hair nor spouted hanar tentacles, but nonetheless, she felt that she was irrevocably changed. It was not only the relationship, the bond between her and Shepard, that had been altered: something fundamental was shifting inside her. Something she was, as of yet, unable to pin down.

It bothered her, to an extent – and on the other hand, she remembered what Shepard had said. _Let go._ She repeated it to her mirror image.

After she finished dressing, she tidied up the bed and folded some of Shepard's clothing and stacked it on a chair, feeling that she had to make herself useful somehow. She could hear Shepard moving around in the apartment, sometimes cursing to herself; Liara surveyed the bedroom for any objects that had strayed from their respective places, and finding none, she closed the door gently behind her, stepping out.

In the kitchen, Shepard was more or less half-dressed: pants hanging loose on her hips as she had her bag in the middle of a vertiable plethora of strange little things and clothing articles. Liara, seeing a thing which held a familiar call to her, reached her hand out towards it but stopped, fingers a few centimeters away. She looked to Shepard, who gave a nod, holding a rolled-up stack of paper between her teeth and therefore unable to verbally respond.

Picking it up, she realized why the item had been familiar: it was Prothean. The design was unmistakeable, the exact geometry in the assymetric assembly of patterns, as well as the irregularity in its shape.

"Where did you get this?" Liara asked, her excitement brimming over.

Shepard made a muffled noise, then grunted and uncermoniously stuffed the paper stack into her bag. "I got it from the asari consort in the Presidium, as a gift for helping her deal with a diplomat. She didn't know what it was. I haven't really given it much thought since."

"It's a Prothean piece, it's one of their rarest storage devices. No one has yet figured out how to read them – it has been suggested that one needs to assemble a great many of them, and piece them together, like a puzzle. Others that there is a construct which can read them." She turned it over, running a careful finger along the traced lines. "It's magnificent. Not a scratch, not a dent, and it has been existing for over fifty thousand years. Marvelous."

"Keep it," Shepard said as she moved to rummage through an open crate that stood by the wall.

"Are you certain of this?"

"Yes."

Liara held it in her hand, treating it with a delicate touch as she reached for some tissue on the kitchen counter to wrap it in. She had been in possession of one once, many decades ago – where had it gone? Slipping the securely wrapped piece into the pocket of her coat, she scanned her memory for any hint of where it had gone to. Instead, she tripped on another train of thought she had been meaning to pick up.

"Can I ask you about something?" Liara sat down on the chair by the kitchen table, supporting her chin in her hand. "That woman yesterday, in the park, who was she?"

Shepard's back, turned to Liara, stiffened for a brief moment before relaxing again.

"She was someone from my past. Helena..." She shook her head. "I didn't really think she was interested enough to keep an eye on me, but I misjudged her." Shepard hauled up her pack of personal belongings onto the tabletop and adjusted the straps on it. "She's Dunstan Blake's ex-wife."

_Family. In a manner of speaking. _"She upset you," Liara stated.

"It's because she wanted something from me." Shepard kept her attention on the bag, fiddling with trying to fit everything into it in an efficient manner. "And I think I might have agreed to help her. She has a sneaky way with her little proposals, as always."

Liara felt that Shepard was purposefully avoiding the subject at hand, that empty variable of what it was that had her under Blake's control. "So you knew her from before?"

"Yeah, she and Dunstan were friends even after their divorce, and she came around often when I lived with him – mostly on business, often to poke fun at me, rarely to see her daughter. She and I had a... Difficult relationship. She didn't envy me, nor did she hate me, she just... Thought I was really pathetic."

"Pathetic?"

"It took me a few years of looking back to understand, but I have an idea about it." She tightened the final strap and took a step back, surveying her work. "I never was a threat to her. In her eyes, I was just this little obsession of Dunstan's, and he would eventually grow to see that there wasn't much to me."

If Shepard was not ready to speak of it, then she was not. Liara was willing to accept as much, having full faith in the passage of time to reveal what was necessary, and forget all that was not. "There is a lot to you, and much of it is beyond what most can perceive, I feel," Liara said in a soft voice.

With a half-smile – seemingly mostly to herself – Shepard slid her arms into the officer's uniform and began to button it up with expert fingers, staring off into the distance as she did it, her mind elsewhere.

Liara couldn't help but notice how messy the dressing was, and firmly pushed Shepard's hands aside, adjusting the collar to lie against the neck properly before working on the final fastenings. Her fingers were not as smooth in doing it as Shepard had been, and she furrowed her brow as she struggled with it. The buttons were just plain unwilling to work with her.

Shepard moved Liara's fumbling hands aside and left the uniform as it was: half-done, half-ready, a mess moving through the apartment, light steps in heavy military boots. She stopped in a fluid movement, everything gathered, thought unspoken on her lips as she turned to Liara. Just eyes meeting eyes. Eyes weighing up what had happened, and what was to happen, in a sliver of space and time where nothing was happening.


	11. The Passing of Sand and Usefulness

**Author's note:** Well, yes, I'm equally surprised as you that I'm re-visiting this old story that was once labelled complete, due to circumstances that distracted from my willingness to continue it. It seems though that it refused to continue going untold, and I decided, sure, I'll come back and continue; so I went back and edited my way through the earlier chapters – the only noticeable difference truly standing out in chapters eight, nine and ten.

And yes, uhm. Hi. I dropped off the face of the Earth more or less for a while. Nice to see you still had me on story alert, I guess? I feel a bit awkward returning to this story and altering some things to make it fit into what I want to write – years have passed, but still I come back to tell it.

* * *

**Chapter XI: The Passing of Sand and Usefulness**

* * *

Out over the distant sea, heavy grey clouds were rolling against each other, bursts of lightning and rain shimmering along the horizon. The backdrop reminded Liara of her youth, when she had lived with her mother by the sea on an asari colony world, just the two of them.

A small house by the sea, with the salty damp air softening everything in their sparse home, and the sea changing colour by the seasons, shifting from light green to pale blue, then in the colder months to an obscured darkened blue, almost black. Like then, she had walked along the shoreline, bare feet, letting the waves lap at her skin, and she had watched the skies that stretched out along the seemingly infinite beach play out the weather.

At night, Benezia had told her flourishing stories when she couldn't sleep and the wind howled like a wounded beast outside the walls. In the day, Benezia wrote, patting her daughter on the head as she played with sticks and stones and other pieces of driftwood.

It wasn't often that Liara came to be by any sea these days, if only because her studies rarely took her there. The truly intact Prothean sites were often in remote caves, hidden from the universe: or in the remote places of their sprawling city-planets, deep down towards the ground level where the dangers of falling debris outweighed the privateers that ocasionally dropped by digs to plunder anything worthwhile.

The little house by the sea, nameless as it was in her memories, seemed to be a mere distance away. It must be the smell, she decided: not all oceans had the same scent, but this one came fairly close and tugged the past back up to remind itself.

They had left after some years, of course. Benezia penned some of her best works and sharpest observations there, and as her publications rose in fame, the current it ignited tugged them back into the centre of asari space. Liara had known, instictively, that they would leave soon the day Shiala arrived.

Shiala had appeared as a force unlike anything Liara had seen until then, in their solitary little world; she wore her commando outfit like a second skin, her muscled body completely controlled and her sharp eyes following each move Liara made. For a year, she stayed with them, sleeping on the hard floor without complaint, showing Liara the correct mnemonics for more aggressive biotic usage. Their hours practicing on the wind-whipped beach grew longer, her grasp of the powers better, while Benezia wandered alone in the house and dismantled it, bit by bit. The drawings were taken down from the wall, their belongings packed into hard boxes and sent away, one by one.

Not that she had given it much thought previously, but that house, in retrospect, was the closest Liara could come to calling anything 'home'.

Home hadn't been a solid point since then. There was the mansion on Thessia Benezia owned, with its sprawling garden and stained-glass windows filtering in coloured sunlight at all hours of the day, bathing the house in various hues depending on the hour and weather. Though Liara hadn't remained there for long, and had felt besieged in the building with all the disciples that gathered to listen to what the matriarch taught.

The university had been something else – like all the other students, she lived in a cramped room in the dormitory skyscrapers stacking themselves high into the air in the city of Serrice. She couldn't open the window that reached from floor to ceiling, and the curtain she used to block out the bright lights fell down from the loose fixtures. Eventually, she just opted for a low bed on the floor and piled her books up high to create a a sliver of shadows cast over her face, allowing her sleep somewhat peacefully.

Then came her years of excavation, of research and digging. All her belongings were streamlined and easily kept in a single bag, and each new world visited she tried shedding more of the heavy burden she had set out with. In the end, there was only her holo-log and a thick book of her current picking she would read in the artificial light on her bed at night. Everything else – clothes, hygiene, equipment – was disposable and in the end, of little to no sentimental value.

Both her book – a dull classic which only had one redeeming quality, the way it vividly painted the life and labour of surviving on Illium – and the holo-log had been lost on Therum, and she had settled down aboard the Normandy empty-handed. Of course, she had backed up her work onto the extranet, the discrepancy would only be one or two days worth of notes, and she had quickly written up brief summaries for them on the computer inside the storage room.

Of course, following that, she had never felt able to muster of the focus to write down all the new information she gleaned about Protheans. Her new log was rapidly filling up, hours worth of putting down the scraps she had been able to take away from the beacon vision. Turning it into something more academic wasn't interesting to her though – the vision felt like a deeply private thing she shared with Shepard now, each glimpse always coming through intertwined with what else she had seen.

Shepard was further down the beach, talking with Chief Williams. Both had their arms crossed over their chests, walking side by side, a faint murmur of their voices audible. They were watching Wrex as he cocked his shotgun at the crustacean creatures (Ashley had nicknamed them 'pod crabs' while they'd been in the Mako, the soldier's rough driving making Liara's gut twist upwards into her esophagus) and fired off a shot which echoed against the cliff walls like a burst of thunder.

She had heard the raised voices earlier, but the actual words had been drowned out by the water clucking against the sand. And now, all she was able to do was to be the quiet bystander as Shepard, approaching Wrex, held her back like she always did when she was about to walk into hazardous territory: straight, shoulders back, chin up. Ashley had been circling around, her relaxed way of moving making it seem like a mere walk to stretch her muscles, had it not been for the shotgun she was toying with.

When Wrex pointed his gun at Shepard, Liara breathed in sharply and felt her entire body strung tight as Alba mirrored the krogan's move: the entire encampment had frozen up with every eye fixed on the two of them. Then, Shepard, working her words through the rage-fuelled mist he was in, had done away with the situation. Everything was over faster than it had begun, and only after Shepard had joined up with Ashley did Liara see that her own hands were shaking.

Just a second, and the lethality was gone. What did danger mean to Shepard? How did she gauge situations, how did she feel about having guns pointed in her face? It seemed she took it all in a stride, accepting that what she did had the potential to create powerful enemies. And that her life was always just a gunshot wound away from ending.

Just a second, and Wrex was on the sandy dunes, his blood forming a huge pool that was staining the armor of the human squad members as they stood leaned over him – but Liara was too far away to tell if they were talking or just watching the last bit of warmth receding from Wrex's limp body.

"Doctor T'Soni?"

Tali had approached her without Liara noticing, the quarian nervously shuffling her feet on the sand. "I find it difficult to keep my balance on this kind of surface," she explained.

"We can sit if you like," Liara offered, motioning to the higher, drier dunes. They settled down on a harder patch, legs stretched out and hands in their laps, faces turned towards the Normandy where it was landed a bit further out in the shallow water. The crew was working on moving things into the cargo hold, the Mako awkwardly making its way up the ramp and spraying some inattentive salarians standing too close with enough water to soak them through.

"Shame about that," Tali said, inclining her head towards the corpse.

"He was an interesting krogan." She wished she had more to say, but she'd never really talked to him. He'd acknowledged her presence, uttered some admiration for her biotics, and that was it. She'd never seen him in action – that privilege belonged to Ashley and Shepard – nor had they socialized; it left her feeling a bit ashamed of herself. That someone who had been a member of the crew had gone entirely under her own personal radar.

"Did Shepard overreact? Perhaps she could have calmed him. He seemed... More reasonable than other krogans."

Shepard was tugging at the corpse of Wrex, trying to move him towards the Normandy. When she had secured a grip on his right ankle, she pushed her heels into the soft, slippery sand and began pulling. He moved half a meter before she moved her feet further back, positioned herself, and gave it another tug. Ashley was just watching, arms crossed; Kaidan was shifting feet next to them.

"Was he? I did not know. To me, he seemed just like any krogan. Willing to take a compromise, or not. This was a major thing to compromise about."

"I suppose. If I had been in Wrex's position..."

As Shepard made it half-way out into the water, she lost her footing and fell backwards into the shallow surf, water splashing up around her. She gave out a slight roar and slammed her fist down, mud splattering up around her.

Ashley pulled the Commander up out of the ankle-deep water, then took the other of Wrex's ankles and together they worked to haul him away.

Liara couldn't help but think that it'd been so much easier for them if they used biotics, especially considering the weight of krogans. Then again, she had noted that Shepard at times struggled to keep particularly weighty objects or hostiles suspended in mass effect fields for longer periods of time. Or perhaps it was just a respectful thing, to carry his body out by the same hands that had killed him.

She dug her hand into the sand around her.

"What does it feel like?" Tali asked. "The sand, I mean."

Liara ran her ungloved fingers through the fine, pale grains. "Warmed by the sun, and dry." But sand changes, transforms into what other elements make it to. "Not much more than that. It's light. Soft in masses, grainy and annoying in smaller amounts. Gets everywhere."

Tali sat quiet, watching the strange procession reach Normandy, where they carried the body up the ramps and into the hangar bay of the ship. When they disappeared out of sight, she cleared her throat. "One day, I long to take off my suit and feel the wind on my face, the earth beneath my feet, the coarse rocks against my fingers." Tali sighed. "At least, do so without getting sick. I had a tear in my suit on the Citadel and ran a high fever on our way here, my mind playing tricks on me. I was convinced I was about to die when I saw my mother's visor and heard her voice." She touched her neck, the marks of her makeshift repairs to it visible. "I still feel dizzy. The heat here is unbearable."

"Will you be alright enough for this mission?"

Tali twisted her head to face Liara straight on, but the glare of the sun erased the usual glow of two slanted eyes, making the quarian look strangely artificial. "I'm well enough," she said. "I just need some more of that disgusting paste, some vitamins, and I'll be just fine for programming a bomb to blow a hole in this world."

"A bomb?"

"That's the plan the salarians have. We're going to turn their ship's core into an explosive rig that is sure to destroy Saren's base. And a lot more." She sounded a bit wistful.

"Does that bother you?"

"What, that my hand will have a part in a devastating destruction that will shake this planet's flora and fauna for decades to come?" She shrugged. "I tell myself it's part of this line of job. That you have to take an order and do what you must to get results, and that Commander Shepard has to give the order as well." She picked up a handful of sand and let it fall between her six fingers. "A beautiful, habitable world. And boom. Part of it will be gone." Tali coughed, the sound coming out from her helmet sounding distorted and sickened.

"On Rannoch, there was an island in the green sea from which sand was shipped to all plantations around the world, nourishing the soil and making the edible plants that more tasty and nutritious. Or so the story goes."

Liara didn't say anything. It felt out of place, either way; it was Tali who wished to speak, to pour her words out to someone who would listen. It struck Liara that the Normandy must feel very lonely to the quarian, and that while it was a ship in space, it was a whole different world from the flotilla life.

"Rannoch is just that, a story, to me. The more I travel with the Normandy, the less inclined I am to think that I'll be part of the solution to find a way back to our homeworld. We've lived on ships for generations now, and some are obsessed with finding a new planet for us to colonize, and what am I but a young one trying to figure out what I can do. So far, I'm not entirely sure there is anything. There's a lot of politics, going all the way down to the smallest exploratory effort, and I'm not interested in that."

"Political family?" she guessed. Something in the way Tali spoke about it reminded her of her own family life.

"Yes. I don't really care one way or the other, I just want to give something solid back to my people. To my flotilla. And now I'm thinking, what if I find it and Shepard takes it out of my hands? That there's some Alliance protocol she'll stick to, some security she won't let go of." _Like Wrex_, unspoken, hanging in the air between them.

How did Shepard measure the value of their lives? Of their worthwhileness to her and her cause? How important was her cause, and how far would she push the methods employed to achieve it? Where did their lives, in all their uniqueness and potential, stop to matter and just turn into an obstacle that could justifiably be dealt with?

The sun was making her skin ache with heat. "Should we get back onboard?" Liara asked.

"I need my medicine," Tali replied flatly.

Brushing the sand off from her feet, she slid back into her boots and climbed onboard the Normandy, the hum of the mass effect drive the closest she came at the moment to a homely sound.


End file.
